ROBERT SMITHSON, Quick Millions, 1965.

Plexiglass and corrugated acrylic,

54 1/a x 56"

IC

Ml

ONS

I , \

(I

ARTIST'S STATEMENT:

For me Quicl< 1\!{i//ions comes out of a world of remote possibilities, held together by incomprehensible motives. The work is named after a movie I have
never seen. All my original intentions for creating the work are out of sight and
out of mind. It is a terminal work: sealed, impenetrable, unrevealing-forever
hidden. I like pbstic as a medium because it can be both re1l and/or unreal, according to your n10od. Plastic exists between a solid specific and a glittering
generality. Quick ;'\Jillions might be an anti-parody of obsolete science-fictiontype architecture, or slippery forms and spaces, but I doubt it. One could also
say it has a "non-content." All kinds of engineering fascinates n1e, I'm for the
automated artist.

Brian O'Doherty, Lesser Knoll'll and Unknown Painters, American Express Pavilion. Worlds
Fair, New York, 1965

DONALD JUDD, Untitled, 1965. Steel and plexiglas, 20 x 48 x 34".

DONALD

DD

(I

Donald Judd has set up a "company," that extends the technique of abstract art
into unheard-of places. He n1ay go to Long Island City and have the Bernstein
Brothers, Tinsmiths put "Pittsburgh" seams into some (Bethcon) iron boxes, or
he nlight go to Allied Plastics in Lower Manhattan and have cut-to-size some
Rohm-Haas "glowing" pink plexiglas. Judd is always on the lookout for new
finishes, like Lavax Wrinkle Finish, which a company pamphlet says, "combines beauty and great durability." Judd likes that con1bination, and so he
might "self" spray one of his fabricated "boxes" with it. Or maybe he will
travel to Hackensack, New Jersey to investigate a lead he got on a new kind of
zinc based paint called Galvanox, which is comparable to "hot-dip" galvanizing. These procedures tend to baille art-lovers. They either wonder where the
"art" went or where the "work" went, or both. It is hard for them to comprehend that Judd is busy extending art into new mediums. This new approach to
technique has nothing to do with sentimental notions about "labor." There is no
subjective craftsmanship. Judd is not a specialist in a certain kind oflabor, but a
whole artist engaged in a multiplicity of techniques.
In Judd's first exhibition in 1963, his plywood and aluminum structures disclosed an awareness of physical "mass" in the form of regular intervals of bulk.
Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art Catalog, 7 Swlptors, r96 5

The intrinsic virtue of "primary matter" was very much in evidence. Each
work offered a different solution for the dislocation of space. One wooden
box, for example, contained a series of recessed slats, exposed only by a slight
concave opening on top of the box. This opening took up only about 20% of
the top surface. The slats were r:nore closely spaced at one end than the other;
as a result, the space seemed squeezed out. Inertia appeared to be subdivided
into remote areas of force. A black pipe-like axis, in another work, was polarized between two massive plywood squares, yet no rotation seemed possible
because the black pipe was flanked by six polarizing square beams that were
bolted into the wooden squares. This non-rotation aspect breaks the suggestion of dynamic space. Matter, not motion, had become Judd's prime concern.
Each of Judd's structures brought into question the very Jor/11 of matter. This is
contrary to the abstract notion that movement is the direct result of space. All
"created nature" seems to have been abstracted out of Judd's concept of physical mass. Just as the Mannerist artists of the sixteenth century permuted the
facts of the Classic Renaissance, so has Judd permuted the facts of Modern
Reality. By such means, Judd discovered a new kind of "architecture," yet his
contrary methods make his "architecture" look like it is built of "antimatter."
Perhaps "primary matter" and "antimatter" are the same thing.
A lack of consciousness of mass seems to have caused the dernise of" actionpainting," and that might explain also the dissolution of"assemblage" and "the
happening." If action, energy, motion, and other kinetics are the main motives
of an artist, his art is quick to atrophy.
While he was making his aluminum and wood structures, Judd developed
an idea for a "space-lattice." This was n1ade out of pipe with "ball fittings," that
stood 4 feet high and about 6 feet long. Constructed with the help of a
plumber, Judd put together this rectangular parallel, piped with a quartet of
pipes conjoining in the center of the work in the shape of a cross.
In the work of Frank Stella and Barnett Newman the "framing support" is
both hinted at and parodied. Clement Greenberg recognized an elernent of
"parody," perhaps unconscious, in Barnett Newman's "field" paintings, which
called attention to the "frame." This element becomes less of a parody, and
more of a conscious fact, in Frank Stella's "shaped canvases." Judd's symmetric,
free-standing structure eliminated all doubts about the importance of the
framework by asserting its formal presence beyond any reference to "flat"
painting. All surfaces vanish in this important work, but return later in his fabricated works with startling new implications.
WithJudd there is no confusion between the anthropomorphic and the abstract. This nukes for an increased consciousness of structure, which maintains
a remote distance from the organic. The "unconscious" has no place in his art.
His crystalline state of mind is far removed from the organic floods of "action
painting." He translates his concepts into artifices of fact, without any illusionistic representations.

Space in Judd's art seen1s to belong to an order of increasing hardness, not

unlike geological fonTlations. He has put space down in the form of deposits.
Such deposits come from his mind rather than nature. Instead of bringing
Christ down from the cross, the way the painters of the Renaissance, Baroque,
and Mannerist periods did in their many versions of The Deposition, Judd has
brought space down into an abstract world of mineral forms. He is involved in
what could be called, "The Deposition of Infinite Space." Tin1e has many anthropomorphic representations, such as Father Time, but space has none. There
is no Father Space or Mother Space. Space is nothing, yet we all have a kind of
vague faith in it. What seems so solid and final in Judd's work is at the same
ti1ne elusive and brittle.
The formal logic of crystallography, apart fiom any preconceived scientific
content, relates to Judd's art in an abstract way. If we define an abstract crystal
as a solid bounded by symn1etrically grouped surfaces, which have definite relationships to a set of imaginary lines called axes, then we have a clue to the
structure of Judd's "pink plexiglas box." Inside the box five wires are strung in
a way that resemHes very strongly the crystallographic idea of axes. Yet, Judd's
axes don't correspond with any natural crystal. The entire box would collapse
without the tension of the axes. The five axes are polarized between two stainless steel sides. The inside surfaces of the stee'l sides are visible through the
transparent plexiglass. Every surface is within full view, which nukes the inside
and outside equally important. Like 1nany of Judd's works, the separate parts of
the box are held together by tension and balance, both of which add to its static
existence.
A reversible up and down quality was an important feature of the work
which Judd showed in the VIII Sao Paulo Eienale. It is impossible to tell what
is hanging from what or what is supporting what. Ups are downs and downs
are ups. An uncanny rnateriality inherent in the surface engulfs the basic structure. Both surface and structure exist simultaneously in a suspended condition.
What is outside vanishes to meet the inside, while what is inside vanishes to
meet the outside. The concept of "antimatter" overruns, and fills everything,
making these very defmite works verge on the notion of disappearance. The
important phenomenon is always the basic lack of substance at the core of the
"facts." The more one tries to grasp the surface structure, the more baffling it
becomes. The work seems to have no natural equivalent to anything physical,
yet all it brings to mind is physicality.

ROBERT SMITHSON, Untitled, 1965. M'1rrorized

plastic and steel, 81 x 35 x I 0".

THE

RYSTAl
Ice is the medium most alien to organic life, a considerable accumulation
of it completely dist'upts the normal cout-se of pmcesses in the biosphere.
P A. Shumkii, Principles of Structural Glaciology

The first time I saw Don Judd's "pink plexiglas box," it suggested a giant crystal from another planet. After talking to Judd, I found out we had a mutual interest in geology and mineralogy, so we decided to go rock hunting in New
Jersey. Out of this excursion came reflections, reconstituted as follows:
Near Paterson, Great Notch, and Upper Montclair are the mineral-rich
quarries of the First Watchung Mountain. Brian H. Mason, in his fascinating
booklet, IJap Rock Minemls of New Jersey, speaks of the "Triassic sedimentary
rocks of the Newark series," which are related to those of the Palisades. In
these rocks one might find: "actinolite, albite, allanite, analcime apatite, anhydrite, apophyllite, aurichalcite, axinite, azurite, babingtonite, bornite, barite,
calcite, chabazite, chalcocite, chalcopyrite, chlorite, chrysocolia, copper, covellite,
Hmper's Bnzaar, May 1966

cuprite, datolite, dolomite, epidote, galena, glauberite, goethite, gmelinite,

greenockite, gypsum, hematite, heulandite, hornblende, laumontite, malachite,
mesolite, natrolite, opal, orpiment, orthoclase, pectolite, prehnite, pumpellyite,
pyrite, pyrolusite, quartz, scolecite, siderite, silver, sphalerite, sphene, stevensite,
stilbite, stilpnomelane, talc, thaumasite, thomsonite, tourmaline, ulexite."
Together with my wife Nancy, and Judd's wife, Julie, we set out to explore
that geological locale.
Upper Montclair quarry, also known as Osborne and Marsellis quarry or
McDowell's quarry, is situated on Edgecliff Road, Upper Montclair, and was
worked from about 1890 to 1918. A lump oflava in the center of the quarry
yields tiny quartz crystals. For about an hour Don and I chopped incessantly at
the lump with hammer and chisel, while Nancy and Julie wandered aimlessly
around the quarry picking up sticks, leaves and odd stones. From the top of
the quarry cliffs, one could see the New Jersey suburbs bordered by the New
York City skyline.
The terrain is flat and loaded with "middle-income" housing developments
with names like Royal Garden Estates, Rolling Knolls Fann,Valley View Acres,
Split-level Manor, Babbling Brook Ranch-Estates, Colonial Vista Homes-on
and on they go, forming tiny boxlike arrangements. Most of the houses are
painted white, but many are painted petal pink, frosted mint, buttercup, fudge,
rose beige, antique green, Cape Cod brown, lilac, and so on. The highways
crisscross through the towns and become man-made geological networks of
concrete. In fact, the entire landscape has a mineral presence. From the shiny
chrome diners to glass windows of shopping centers, a sense of the crystalline
prevails.
When we finished at the quarry, we went to Bond's Ice Cream Bar and had
some AWFUL-AWFULS-"awful big-and awful good ... it's the drink you
eat with a spoon." We talked about the little crystal cavities we had found, and
looked at The Field Book of Co/11111011 Rocks and Minerals by Frederic Brewster
Loomis. I noticed ice is a crystal: "Ice, H 2 0, water, specific gravity-.92, colorless to white, luster adamantine, transparent on thin edges. Beneath the surface
the hexagonal crystals grow downward into the water, parallel to each other,
malcing a fibrous structure, which is very apparent when ice is 'rotten: ... "
After that we walked to the car through the charming Tudoroid town of
Upper Montclair, and headed for the Great Notch Quarry. I turned on the car
radio: " ... countdown survey ... chew your little troubles away ... high ho
hey hey...."
My eyes glanced over the dashboard, it became a complex of chrome fixed
into an embankment of steel. A glass disc covered the clock. The speedometer
was broken. Cigarette butts were packed into the ashtray. Faint reflections slid
over the windshield. Out of sight in the glove compartment was a silver flashlight and an Esso map of Vermont. Under the radio dial (55-7-9-II-14-16) was
a row of five plastic buttons in the shape of cantilevered cubes. The rearview
0

mirror dislocated the road behind us. While listening to the radio, some of us
read the Sunday newspapers. The pages made slight noises as they turned; each
sheet folded over their laps forming temporary geographies of paper. A valley
of print or a ridge of photographs would come and go in an instant.
We arrived at the Great Notch Quarry, which is situated "about three hundred yards southwest of the Great Notch station of the Erie Railroad." The
quarry resembled the moon. A gray factory in the midst of it all, looked like
architecture designed by Robert Morris. A big sign on one building said THIS
IS A HARD HAT AREA. We started climbing over the piles and ran into a
"rock hound," who came on, I thought, like Mr. Wizard, and who gave us all
kinds of rock-hound-type information in an authoritative manner. We got a
rundown on all the quarries that were closed to the public, as well as those that
were open.
The walls of the quarry did look dangerous. Cracked, broken, shattered; the
walls threatened to come crashing down. Fragmentation, corrosion, decomposition, disintegration, rock creep, debris slides, mud flow, avalanche were
everywhere in evidence. The gray sky seemed to swallow up the heaps around
us. Fractures and faults spilled forth sediment, crushed conglomerates, eroded
debris and sandstone. It was an arid region, bleached and dry. An infinity of
surfaces spread in ever,y direction. A chaos of cracks surrounded us.
On the top of a pr'omontory stood a motionless rockdrill against the blank
which was the sky. High-tension towers transported electric cable over the
quarry. Dismantled parts of steam shovels, tread machines and trucks were
lined up in random groups. Such objects interrupted the depositions of waste
that formed the general condition of the place. What vegetation there was
seemed partially demolished. Newly made boulders eclipsed parts of a wire
and pipe fence. Railroad tracks passed by the quarry, the ties formed a redundant sequence of modules, while the steel tracks projected the modules into an
imperfect vanishing point.
On the way back to Manhattan, we drove through the Jersey Meadows, or
more accurately the Jersey Swamps-a good location for a movie about life on
Mars. It even has a network of canals that are choked by acres of tall reeds.
Radio towers are scattered throughout this bleak place. Drive-ins, motels and
gas stations exist along the highway, and behind them are smoldering garbage
dumps. South, toward Newark and Bayonne, the smoke stacks ofheavy industry add to the general air pollution.
As we drove through the Lincoln Tunnel, we talked about going on another trip, to Franldin Furnace; there one nlight find minerals that glow under
ultraviolet light or "black light." The countless cream colored square tiles on
the walls of the tunnel sped by, until a sign announcing New York broke the
tiles' order.

/,\
(

RONALD BLADEN, Untitled, 1965. Aluminum and

painted wood, each element, I 08 x 48 x 120 x 21 ".

NTRO

AN

TH

NEW

On rising to my feet and peering across the green glow of the Desert,
I perceived that the monument against which I had slept was but one
of thousands. Before me stretched long parallel avenues, clear to the
far horizon of similar broad, low pillars.
John Taine (Eric Temple Bell) "THE TIME STREAM"

Many architectural concepts found in science-fiction have nothing to do with

science or fiction, instead they suggest a new kind of monumentality which
has much in conm1on with the aims of some of today's artists. I am thinking in
particular of Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Sol Le Witt, Dan Flavin, and of certain artists in the "Park Place Group." The artists who build structured canvases
and "wall-size" paintings, such as Will Insley, Peter Hutchinson and Frank
Stella are more indirectly related. The chrome and plastic fabricators such as
Paul Thek, Craig Kaufii11an, and Larry Bell are also relevant. The works of
many of these artists celebrate what Flavin calls "inactive history" or what the
Artfowni.]une r966

10

physicist calls "entropy" or "energy-drain." They bring to mind the Ice Age
rather than the Golden Age, and would most likely confirm Vladimir Nabokov's
observation that, "The future is but the obsolete in reverse." In a rather roundabout way, many of the artists have provided a visible analog for the Second
Law of Thennodynamics, which extrapolates the range of entropy by telling
us energy is more easily lost than obtained, and that in the ultimate future the
whole universe will burn out and be transformed into an all-encompassing
sameness. The "blackout" that covered the Northeastern states recently, may
be seen as a preview of such a future. Far frorn creating a mood of dread, the
power failure created a mood of euphoria. An almost cosmic joy swept over all
the darkened cities. Why people felt that way rnay never be ;mswered.
Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monun1ents, the
new monuments seenr to cause us to forget the future. Instead ofbeing nude
of natural materials, such as nrarble, granite, or other kinds of rock, the new
monunrents are made of artificial materials, plastic, chrome, and electric light.
They are not built for the ages, but rather against the ages. They are involved
in a systenratic reduction of time down to fractions of seconds, rather than in
representing the long spaces of centuries. Both past and future are placed into
an objective present. This kind of time has little or no space; it is stationary and
without movement, it is going nowhere, it is anti-Newtonian, as well as being
instant, and is against the wheels of the time-clock. Flavin makes "instantmonmnents"; parts for "Monument 7 for V 'Tatlin" were purchased at the
Radar Fluorescent Conrpany. The "instant" makes Flavin's work a part of tim.e
rather than space. Time becomes a place minus motion. If time is a place, then
innumerable places are possible. Flavin turns gallery-space into gallery time.
Time breaks down into many times. Rather than saying, "What tinre is it?"
we should say, "Where is the tirne?" "Where is Flavin's Monument?" The objective present at times seems missing. A million years is contained in a second,
yet we tend to forget the second as soon as it happens. Flavin's destruction of
classical time and space is based on an entirely new notion of the structure .
of nratter.
Time as decay or biological evolution is eliminated by many of these artists;
this displacenrent allows the eye to see time as an infinity of surfaces or structures, or both combined, without the burden of what Roland Barthes calls the
"undifferentiated mass of organic sensation." The concealed surfaces in sorne
of Judd's works are hideouts for time. His art vanishes into a series of motionless intervals based on an order of solids. Robert Grosvenor's suspended structural surfaces cancel out the notion of weight, and reverse the orientation of
n1.atter within the solid-state of inorganic time. This reduction of time all but
annihilates the value of the notion of "action" in art.
Mistakes and dead-ends often nrean more to these artists than any proven
problem. Questions about form seem as hopelessly inadequate as questions
about content. Problems are unnecessary because problen1s represent values

II

that crea tc the illusion of purpose. The problem of "form vs. content," for exatnple, leads to illusionistic dialectics that become, at best, formalist reactions
against content. Reaction follows action, till fmally the artist gets "tired" and
settles for a monurnental inaction. The action-reaction syndrotne is n1erely the
leftovers of what Marshall McLuhan calls the hypnotic state of mechanism.
According to hirn, an electrical nmnbing or torpor has replaced the mechanical breakdown. The awareness of the ultimate collapse of both mechanical and
electrical technology has motivated these artists to build their monuments to
or against entropy. As LeWitt points out, "I am not interested in idealizing
technology." Le Witt might prefer the word "sub-monun1ental," especially if
we consider his proposal to put a piece of Cellini's jewelry into a block of cement. An almost alchemic fascination with inert properties is his concern
here, but LeWitt prefers to turn gold into cement.
The much denigrated architecture of Park Avenue known as "cold glass
boxes," along with the Manneristic modernity of Philip Johnson, have helped
to foster the entropic mood. The Union Carbide building best typifies such
architectural entropy.In its vast lobby one may see an exhibition called "The
Future." It offers the purposeless "educational" displays of Will Burtin, "internationally acclaimed for his three-dimensional designs," which portray
"Atomic Energy in Action." If ever there was an example of action in entropy,
this is it. The action is frozen into an array of plastic and neon, and enhanced
by the sound of Muzak faintly playing in the background. At a certain time of
day, you may also see a movie called "The Petrified River." A nine-foot
vacuum-formed blue plexiglass globe is a model of a uranium. atom-"ten
million trillion trillion tim.es the size of the actual atom." Lights on the ends of
flexible steel rods arc whipped about in the globe. Parts of the "underground"

ROBERT SMITHSON, Cryosphere, 1966. Painted steel w/chrome inserts,

six modules, 17 x 17 x 6".

12

DAN FLAVIN, installation view, November 1964.

movie, "The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man," were filmed in this exhibition hall. Taylor Mead creeps around in the film like a loony sleepwalker,
and licks the plastic models depicting "chain-reaction." The sleek walls and
high ceilings give the place an uncanny tomb-like atmosphere. There is something irresistible about such a place, something grand and empty.
This kind of architecture without "value of qualities," is, if anything, a fact.
From this "undistinguished" run of architecture, as Flavin calls it, we gain a
clear perception of physical reality free from the general claims of "purity and
idealism." Only conm1odities can afford such illusionistic values; for instance,
soap is 99 4Y1oo'!{, pure, beer has more spirit in it, and dog food is ideal; all and
all this means such values are worthless. As the cloying effect of such "values"
wears off, one perceives the "facts" of the outer edge, the flat surface, the banal,
the empty, the cool, blank after blank; in other words, that infinitesimal condition known as entropy.
The slurbs, urban sprawl, and the infinite number of housing developments
of the postwar boorn have contributed to the architecture of entropy. Judd, in
a review of a show by Roy Lichtenstein, speaks of "a lot of visible things" that
are "bland and empty," such as "most modern cotnmercial buildings, new
Colonial stores, lobbies, most houses, most clothing, sheet aluminum, and plastic with leather texture, the formica like wood, the cute and modern patterns
inside jets and drugstores." Near the super highways surrounding the city, we
find the discount centers
cut-rate stores with their sterile facades. On the
inside of such places are maze-like counters with piles of neatly stacked rnerchandise; rank on rank it goes into a consumer oblivion. The lugubrious complexity of these interiors has brought to art a new consciousness of the vapid
and the dull. But this very vapidity and dullness is what inspires many of the
l.
ROBERT GROSVENOR, Transoxiana, 1965. Painted wood, polyester and
steel, 126 x 372 x 36".

13

more gifted artists. Morris has distilled 1nany

such dull facts and made then1 into nlonumental artifices of "idea." In such a way, Morris has
restored the idea of immortality by accepting
it as a fact of emptiness. His work conveys a
rnood of vast immobility; he has even gone so
far as to fashion a bra out of lead. (This he has
1nade for his dance partner, Yvonne Rainer, to
help stop the motion in her dances.)
This kind of nullification has re-created
Kasimir Malevich's "non-objective world,"
FORREST MYERS, E/3, 1965. Aluminum and lacquer paint,
16xl6xl6".

where there are no more "likenesses of reality,

no idealistic images, nothing but a desert!" But
for many of to day's artists this "desert" is a
"City of the Future" made of null structures
and surfaces. This "City" performs no natural
function, it simply exists between mind and
matter, detached from both, representing neither. It is, in fact, devoid of all classical ideals of
space and process. It is brought into focus by a
strict condition of perception, rather than by
any expressive or en10tive means. Perception as
a deprivation of action and reaction brings to
the mind the desolate, but exquisite, surfacestructures of the empty "box" or "lattice." As
action decreases, the clarity of such surfacestructures increases. This is evident in art when
all representations of action pass into oblivion.
At this stage, lethargy is elevated to the most
glorious magnitude. In Damon Knight's Scifie novel, "Beyond the Barrier," he describes in
a phenomenological manner just such surfacestructures: "Part of the scene before them
seemed to expand. Where one of the flotation
machines had been, there was a dim lattice of
crystals, growing more shadovvy and insub-

JOHN CHAMBERLAIN,

Conrad, 1964. Auto lacquer, metal flake on

formica with chrome, 48 x 4!3 ".

stantial as it swelled; then darkness; then a dazzle of faint prismatic light-tiny complexes in
a vast three-dimensional array, growmg
steadily bigger." This description has none of
the "values" of the naturalistic "literary" novel,
it is crystalline, and of the mind by virtue of

14

being outside of unconscious action. This very

well could be an inchoate concept for a work
by Judd, Le Witt, Flavin, or Insley.
It seems that beyond the barrier, there are
only more barriers. Insley's "Night Wall" is
both a grid and a blockade; it offers no escape.
Flavin's fluorescent lights all but prevent prolonged viewing; ultimately, there is nothing to
see. Judd turns the logic of set theory into
block-like facades. These facades hide nothing
but the wall they hang on.

PAUL THEK,

Hippopotamus,

1965. 19 3/4 x II x I 11/<''.

LeWitt's first one-nun show at the now defunct Daniel's Gallery presented a rather uncmnpromising group of momunental "obstructions." Many people were "left cold" by
them, or found their finish "too dreary." These
obstructions stood as visible clues of the future. A future of humdrum practicality in the
shape of standardized ofilce buildings modeled
after Emery Roth; in other words, a jerry-built
future, a feigned future, an ersatz future very
much like the one depicted in the movie "The
Tenth Victim." LeWitt's show has helped to
neutralize the myth of progress. It has also corroborated Wylie Sypher's insight that "Entropy
is evolution in reverse." Le Witt's work carries
with it the brainwashed mood of Jasper Johns'
"Tennyson," Flavin's "Coran's Broadway Flesh,"
and Stella's "The Marriage of Reason and
Squalor."
Morris also discloses this backward looking
future with "erections" and "vaginas" embedded in lead. They tend to illustrate fossilized
sexuality by mixing the time states or ideas of
"1984" with "One Million B.C." Claes Oldenburg achieves a similar conjunction of time
with his prehistoric "ray-guns." This sense of
extreme past and future has its partial origin
with the Museum of Natural History; there
the "cave-n1an" and the "space-n1an" nny be

LYMAN KIPP, Andy's Carte Blanche, 1965.

Painted plywood, 96 x 36 x 60".

seen under one roof. In this museum all "nature" is stufTed and interchangeable.

15

This City ( I thought) is so horrible that its mere existence and

perdurance, though in the midst of a secret desert, contaminates
the past and future and in some way even jeopardizes the stars.
Jorge Luis Borges, The Immortal
Tromaderians consider anything blue extremely pornographic.
Peter Hutchinson, Extraterrestrial Art
"Lust for Life" is the story of the great sensualist painter Vincent
Van Gogh, who bounds through the pages and passions of Irving
Stone's perennial bestseller. And this is the Van Gogh overwhelmingly brought before us by Kirk Douglas in M-G-M's film version,
shot in Cinemascope and a sun-burst of color on the actual sites
of Van Gogh's struggles to feel feelings never felt before.
Promotion Copy, quoted in
Vincent Van Gogh-The Big Picture, John Mulligan
Unlike the hyper-prosaism of Morris, Flavin, Le Witt, and Judd, the works
of Thek, Kauffman, and Bell convey a hyper-opulence. Thek's sadistic geometry is made out of simulated hunks of torn flesh. Bloody meat in the shape of a
birthday cake is contained under a pyramidal chrome framework-it has stainless steel candies in it. Tubes for drinking "blood cocktails" are inserted into
some of his painful objects. Thek achieves a putrid finesse, not unlike that disclosed in WilliamS. Burroughs' Nova Express; "-Flesh juice in festering spines
of terminal sewage-Run down of Spain and 42nd St. to the fish city of marble flesh grafts-." The vacuum-formed plastic reliefs by Kauffman have a pale
lustrous surface presence. A lumpy sexuality is implicit in the transparent forms
he employs. Something of the primal nightmare exists in both Thek and
Kauffinan. The slippery bubbling ooze from the movie "The Blob" creeps
into one's mind. Both Thek and Kauffman have arrested the movement of
blob-type matter. The mirrored reflections in Bell's work are contaminations
of a more elusive order. His chrome-plated lattices contain a Pythagorean
chaos. Reflections reflect reflections in an excessive but pristine manner.
Some artists see an infinite number of movies. Hutchinson, for instance, instead of going to the country to study nature, will go to see a movie on 42nd
Street, like "Horror at Party Beach" two or three times and contemplate it for
weeks on end. The movies give a ritual pattern to the lives of many artists, and
this induces a kind of "low-budget" mysticism, which keeps them in a perpetual trance. The "blood and guts" of horror movies provides for their "organic
needs," while the "cold steel" of Sci-fie movies provides for their "inorganic
needs." Serious movies are too heavy on "values," and so are dismissed by the
more perceptive artists. Such artists have X-ray eyes, and can see through all of
that cloddish substance that passes for "the deep and profound" these days.
Some landmarks of Sci-fie are: Creation of the Humanoids (Andy Warhol's fa-

16

ROBERT MORRIS, Untitled, 1963. Lead, I 0 x 8".

PETER HUTCHINSON, Silver Highlight, 1966. Liquitex on canvas,

72 X?".

vorite movie), The Planet of the Va111pires (movie about entropy), The T!Jing, The
Day the Earth Stood Still, 77Je Ti111e 1\llachine, Village (!fthc Giants (first teen-science
film), Hlar of the vVorlds (interesting metallic machines). Some landmarks of Horror are: Creature ji"Oin the Black Lagoon, 1 Was a Teenage vVerewo/f, Horror Cha111ber

of Dr. Faustus (very sickening), Abbott and Costello lvleet Fmnkemtein. Artists that
like Horror tend toward the emotive, while artists vvho like Sci-fie tend toward the perceptive.
Even more of a mental conditioner than the movies, is the actual movie
house. Especially the "mod erne" interior architecture of the new "art-houses"
like Cinema I and II, 57th St. Lincoln Art Theatre, the Coronet, Cinema Rendezvous, the Cinema Village, the Baronet, the Festival, and the Murray Hill.
Instead of the crununy baroque and rococo of the 42nd Street theaters, we get
the "padded cell" look, the "stripped down" look, or the "good-taste" look.
The physical confinement of the dark box-like room indirectly conditions the
mind. Even the place where you buy your ticket is called a "box-office." The
lobbies are usually full of box-type fixtures like the soda-machine, the candy
counter, and telephone booths. Time is compressed or stopped inside the
n10vie house, and this in turn provides the viewer with an entropic condition.
To spend time in a movie house is to make a "hole" in one's life.
Recently, there has been an attempt to fonnulate an analog between" conlmunication theory" and the ideas of physics in terms of entropy. As A. J. Ayer
has pointed out, not only do we communicate what is true, but also what is
false. Often the false has a greater "reality" than the true. Therefore, it seems

17

that all information, and that includes anything that is visible, has its entropic
side. Falseness, as an ultimate, is inextricably a part of entropy, and this 1lseness
is devoid of moral implications.
Like the movies and the movie houses, "printed-matter" plays an entropic
role. Maps, charts, advertisements, art books, science books, money, architectural plans, math books, graphs, diagrams, newspapers, comics, booklets and
pamphlets from industrial companies are all treated the same. Judd has a
labyrinthine collection of "printed-matter," some of which he "looks" at
rather than reads. By this means he might take a math equation, and by sight,
translate it into a metal progression of structured intervals. In this context, it is
best to think of "printed-matter" the way Borges thinks of it, as "The universe
(which others call the library)," or like McLuhan's "Gutenberg Galaxy," in
other words as an unending "library of Babel." This condition is reflected in
Henry Geldzahler's remark, ''I'm doing a book on European painting since
1900-a drugstore book. Dell is printing roo,ooo copies." Too bad Dell isn't
printing roo,ooo,ooo,ooo.
Judd's sensibility encompasses geology, and mineralogy. He has an excellent
collection of geologic maps, which he scans fi.om time to time, not for their
intended content, but for their exquisite structural precision. His own writing
style has much in conm1on with the terse, factual descriptions one finds in his
collection of geology books. Compare this passage from one of his books, "The
Geology of Jackson County, Missouri" to his own criticism: "The interval between the Cen1ent City and the Raytown limestones varies fi.-om ro to 23 feet.
The lower three-quarters is an irregularly colored green, blue, red, and yellow

WILL INSLEY, Night Wall, 1964. Lead, oil on masonite,8'8" high.

10

shale which at smne places contains

concretions." And now an excerpt from Judd's review of Dan Flavin's first one-man show: "The light is
bluntly and awkwardly stuck on the square block; it protrudes awkwardly. The
red in the green attached to a lighter green is odd as color, and as a sequence."
I like particularly the way in which he (Robert Morris) subverts
the "purist" reading one would normally give to such geometric
arrangements.
Barbara Rose, "Looking at American Sculpture,"
Ar({ontlll, February r965
"Point Triangle Gray" Faith sang, waving at an intersection ahead.
"That's the medical section. Tests and diseases, injuries and-" she
giggled naughtily-"Supply depot for the Body Banlc."
J. Williamson & F Pohl, The
of. Space
Make a
sick
picture
or a sick
Readymade
Marcel Duchamp, from the Green Box
Many of Morris's wall structures are direct homages to Duchamp; they deploy facsimiles of ready-mades within high Manneristic frames of reference.
Extensions of the Cartesian mind are carried to the most attenuated points of
no return by a systematic annulment of n1ovement. Descartes' cosmology is
brought to a standstill. Movement in Morris's work is engulfed by many types
of stillness: delayed action, inadequate energy, general slowness, an all over
sluggishness. The ready-nudes are, in fact, puns on the Bergsonian concept of
"creative evolution" with its idea of "ready made categories." Says Bergson,
"The history of philosophy is there, however, and shows us the eternal conflict
of systems, the impossibility of satisfactorily getting the real into the ready-nude
garments of our ready-made concepts, the necessity of making to measure." But
it is just such an "irnpossibility" that appeals to Duchamp and Morris. With this
in mind, Morris's n1onstrous "ideal" structures are inconsequential or uncertain ready-nudes, which are definitely outside of Bergson's concept of creative
evolution. If anything, they are uncreative in the manner of the roth-century
alchemist-philosopher-artist. C. G.Jung's writing on "The Materia Prima" offers many clues in this direction. Alchemy, it seems, is a :oncrete way of dealing with sameness. In this context, Duchamp and Morris may be seen as artificers of the uncreative or deneators of the Real. They are like the roth-century
artist Parmigianino, who "gave up painting to become an alchemist." This
nlight help us to understand both Judd's and Morris's interest in geology. It is
also well to remember that Parmigianino and Duchamp both painted "Vir-

19

gins," when they did paint. Sydney Freedberg observed in the work ofParmigianino "an assembly of surfaces, nothing is contained within these surfaces."
Such an observation might also be applied to Duchamp's hollow "Virgins,"
with their insidious almost lewd associations. The "purist" surfaces of certain
artists have a "contamination" in them that relates to Duchamp and Parmigianino, if not in fact, at least in idea.
The impure-purist surface is very much in evidence in the new abstract art,
but I think Stella was the fmt to employ it. The iridescent purple, green, and
silver surfaces that followed Stella's all-black works, conveyed a rather lurid
presence through their symmetries. An exacerbated, gorgeous color gives a
chilling bite to the purist context. Immaculate beginnings are subsumed by
glittering ends. Like Mallarme's "Herodiade;' these surfaces disclose a "cold
scintillation"; they seem to "love the horror of being virgin." These inaccessible surfaces deny any definite meaning in the most definite way. Here beauty is
allied with the repulsive in accordance with highly rigid rules. One's sight is
mentally abolished by Stella's hermetic kingdOJTl of surfaces.
Stella's inm1aculate but sparkling synnnetries are reflected in John Chamberlain's "Kandy-Kolored" reliefs. "They are extreme, snazzy, elegant in the
wrong way, immoderate," says Judd. "It is also interesting that the surfaces of
the reliefs are defmitely surfaces." Chamberlain's use of chrome and lTletalflake
brings to mind the surfaces in Scotpio Rising, Kenneth Anger's m.any-faceted
horoscopic film. about constellated motorcyclists. Both Chamberlain and Anger
have developed what could be called California surfaces. In a review of the
film, Ken Kelman speaks of "the ultimate reduction of ultimate experience to
brilliant chromatic surface; Thanatos in Chrome-artificial death" in a way that
evokes Chamberlain's giddy reliefs.
Judd bought a purple Florite crystal at the World's Fair. He likes the "uncreated" look of it and its impenetrable color. John Chamberlain, upon learning
of Judd's interest in such a color, suggested he go to the Harley Davidson Motorcycle Company and get some "Hi-Fi" lacquer. Judd did this and "self"
sprayed some of his works with it. This transparent lacquer allows the "starspangled" marking on the iron sheet to come through, making the surfaces
look mineral hard. His standard crystallographic boxes come in a variety of
surfaces from Saturnian orchid-plus to wrinkle-textured blues and greensalchemy from the year

2000.

But I think nevetheless, we do not feel altogether comfortable at

being forced to say that the crystal is the seat of greater disorder
than the parent liquid.
P. W Bridgman, The Nature Qf Thermodyna111ics
The formal logic of crystallography, apart from any preconceived scientific
content, relates to Judd's art in an abstract way. If we define an abstract crystal
as a solid bounded by symmetrically grouped surfaces, which have definite re-

20

lationships to a set of imaginary lines called axes, then we have a clue to the
structure of Judd's "pink plexiglas box." Inside the box five wires are strung in
a way that resembles very strongly the crystallographic idea of axes. Yet, Judd's
axes don't correspond with any natural crystal. The entire box would collapse
without the tension of the axes. The flve axes polarize between two stainless
steel sides. The inside surfaces of the steel sides are visible through the transparent plexiglas. Every surface is within full view, which makes the inside and
outside equally important. Like many of Judd's works, the separate parts of the
box are held together by tension and balance, both of which add to its static
existence.
Like energy, entropy is in the ftrst instance a measure of something that happens when one state is transformed into another.
P. W Bridgman, Tlze Nature ofTherl/lodynalllics
The Park Place Group (Mark di Suvero, Dean Fleming, Peter Forakis,
Robert Grosvenor, Anthony Magar, Tamara Melcher, Forrest Myers, Ed Ruda,
and Leo Valledor) exists in a space-titne monastic order, where they research a
cosmos modeled after Einstein. They have also pennuted the "models" of
R. Buckminster Fuller's "vectoral" geometry in the most astounding manner.
Fuller was told by certain scientists that the fourth dimension was "ha-ha,"
in other words, that it is laughter. Perhaps it is. It is well to remember that the
seemingly topsy-turvy world revealed by Lewis Carroll did spring from a well
ordered mathematical mind. Martin Gardner in his "The Annotated Alice,"
notes that in science-fiction story "Mimsy Were the Borogroves" the author
Lewis Padgett presents the Jabberwocky as a secret language from the future,
and that if rightly understood, it would explain a way of entering the fourth
dimension. The highly ordered non-sense of Carroll, suggests that there tnight
be a similar way to treat laughter. Laughter is in a sense a kind of entropic
"verbalization." How could artists translate this verbal entropy, that is "ha-ha,"
into "solid-tnodels"? Some of the Park Place artists seem to be researching this
"curious" condition. The order and disorder of the fourth dimension could be
set between laughter and crystal-structure, as a device for unlimited speculation.
Let us now defme the different types of Generalized Laughter, according to
the SL'X main crystal systems: the ordinary laugh is cubic or square (Isometric),
the chuclde is a triangle or pyramid (Tetragonal), the giggle is a hexagon or
rhomboid (Hexagonal), the titter is prismatic (Orthorhombic), the snicker is
oblique (Monoclinic), the guffaw is asymmetric (Triclinic). To be sure this definition only scratches the surface, but I think it will do for the present. If we
apply this "ha-ha-crystal" concept to the monumental models being produced
by some of the artists in the Park Place group, we might begin to understand
the fourth-dimensional nature of their work. From here on in, we must not
think of Laughter as a laughing matter, but rather as the "matter-of-laughs."
Solid-state hilarity, as manifest through the "ha-ha-crystal" concept, appears

21

SOL LeWITT, 1965. Installation view.

in a patently anthropomorphic way in Alice in vVonderland, as the Cheshire Cat.

Says Alice to the Cat, "you make one quite giddy!" This anthropornorphic element has much in common with im.pure-purist art. The "grin without a cat"
indicates "laugh-rnatter and/ or anti-matter," not to rnention something approaching a solid giddiness. Giddiness of this sort is reflected in Myers' plastic
contraptions. Myers sets hard titter against soft snickers, and puts hard guffaws
onto soft giggles. A fit of silliness becomes a rhomboid, a high-pitched discharge
of mirth becomes prismatic, a happy outburst becomes a cube, and so forth.
You observed them at work in null time. Frorn your description
of what they were about, it seems apparent that they were erecting a transfer portal linking the null level with its corresponding
aspect of normal entropy-in other words, with the normal
continuun1.
Keith Laumer, TI1e Other Side of Tillie
Through direct observation, rather than explanation, many of these artists
have developed ways to treat the theory of sets, vectoral geometry, topology,
and crystal structure. The diagrammatic methods of the "new math" have led
to a curious phenon1enon. Namely, a more visible math that is unconcerned
with size or shape in any rnetrical sense. The "paper and pencil operations"
that deal with the invisible structure of nature have found new models, and
have been combined with sorne of the more fragile states of mind. Math is
dislocated by the artists in a personal way, so that it becomes "Manneristic" or

22

separated from its original meaning. This dislocation of meaning provides the
artist with what could be called "synthetic math." Charles Peirce (r839-I914),
the American philosopher, speaks of "graphs" that would "put before us
ing pictures of thought." (See Martin Gardner's Logic 1\!Iac/zines and Diagrallls.)
This synthetic math is reflected in Duchamp's "measured" pieces of fallen
threads, "Three Standard Stoppages," Judd's sequential structured surfaces,
Valledor's "fourth di1nensional" color vectors, Grosvenor's hypervolumes in
hyperspace, and di Suvero 's demolitions of space-time. These artists face the
possibility of other dimensions, with a new kind of sight.

23

ITY

AT THE EN

THE PLANETARIUM, A FROZEN WHIRLPOOL

THE WORLD,

VAST STRUCTURE OF CONCENTRIC

CIRCLES, ROUND WHOSE BORDERS ONE

FIND AN INTERMINABLE

COLLECTION OF IDEAS AS OBJECTS, A REPOSITORY OF MODEL

UNIVERSES. HERE ALSO IS THE DOMAIN OF THE GREAT BEAR.

Natme is att ittfinite sphere, whose ce11ter is

everywhere and whose circwnference is nowhere.
-PASCAL

Borges speaks of a labyrinth that is a straight line, invisible

and unceasing. Overwhelming in irs symmetries, the architecture of the planetarilm1 is more labyrinthian. Circular,
insular, windowless, it renders the mind itself invisible. An
arciscic conception of the inconceivable, it conforms to no
omer necessity. Edges blur as one tries to distinguish an outline. The ambulacories become vast interminable spaces;
traversing them becomes an interstellar journey. Once such
expectations occur, there no longer exist any realities. Just
vague disorders and contingencies. The planetarium becomes
the same size as the universe; which it is. Perplexed, dizzied,
one encounters here a cosmic nostalgia. Vertigo .at contemplating man's most futile gescure-parrimony of che infinite.
Above the staircase a sign:

The walls of the original sections of the building have <1

clotted surface and are painted sky-blue. They are a last
refuge from the sleek and streamlined. There is a toneless.
bleak feeling in the blank stone facing, the wide stretches
of deserted corridor, the dark shrouded corners. A supernatural, immobilizing effect. Bur the light of recently installed
exhibitions is bleaching om the dim uncertainties of 19.\4.
New notions of the future and space, more optimistic and
satisfying. are supplanting the dreary void. Formica and
fluorescent, chrome and plexiglass are replacing the beaverboard, textured cement, glass and plywood. The clism.d
maroons and blacks <lfC being repainted aqua, chartreuse.
cerise or tangerine.
The conundrum, however. remains.

At first only the image of a yellow light bulb is visible,

suspended from the ceiling. A small globe of yellow incandescenc light sunk in a dim background. Slowly other
groupings of lights appear, advancing or retreating sluggishly
as they move om from the cemer along wider and wider
tracks. In orbit about the second order of lamps, further
diminished lights revolve, sometimes indistinct, sometimes
overlapping, hanging from boxes and armatures or other less
simple shapes. This is the Solar System.
On the floor, in the center of the circular room, beneath
the sun, is a twelve-foot reproduction of the Aztec Calendar
Stone. The core of the design is a face of the Sun God. Its
close-sec eyes are crossed. Its expression vaguely cruel. On
either side of the Sun, claws enclosed in circles are grasping
human hearts.
!\bout the stone in concentric rows are the seats. In the
Captives of the Planets.
seats, in stupor, the audience.
The atmosphere is violet, silent and inert. A recorded lecture
drones in a basal monOtone. Vacancy adds co the lifelessness.
The axes of the system cut four aisles through the rightly
wound rings of chairs. The aisles terminate in four sets' of
double doors at the outermost reaches. The doors, once dosed,
expel temporality. Enormous lengths of time are compressed
inro the room. Light-years pass in minutes. Life so extended
becomes negligible. The cycle of the planets occurs and
reoccurs. The Solar System, this mechanical collection of
rracks, boxes, bulbs, gears, armatures, rods, seems tired, torpid.
A chamber of ennui. And fatigue. It is endless, if only the
electricity holds out.

All photos courtesy of American Museum of Natural History

"Under the great dome,

the lecturer, with a complicated series of buttons,
dials

and

switches

to

manipulate, and with over

two

thousand

possible

combinations at his command, is virtually in conJrol of the universe."

Hayden Planetarium
Guide Book

]U!])NriJJIIJruJIDIINAlL IECC1[I!([]JN OIF 1riHIIE IHIA1(])llEN IfD[ANIETA1Rll1VM

Beyond the malevolent red exit sign of the Solar System rests
the Williamette meteor. It is, presumably, one of the largest
meteors in captivity. Behind it a caption from another exhibit
reads "The Future."
It is here, at the perimeter of the old sensibility, that the
Viking Rocket display lies, caught between the old humanism
and the new technologism. Along its fifty-foot length are
inset twenty plastic windows. Ten of these are clear and
transparent. Four are green. Three are red. Two are blue.
The remaining one is of an indeterminate cast. The body of
the rocket was at one time white. It has become overcast,
marred in spots, gray, somehow decadent. The nose cone
appears to be of another material or else the same material
unpainted. The interior looks uncomplicated. Various square,
cylindrical or polygonal boxes and compartments, either open
or closed, perforated or solid, are interconnected by n::eans
of single or grouped wires. The parts are labeled: Cosmic
Ray Coincidence Amplifier, Solar Aspect, GiJ_I1bal Ring,
Doppler Antenna, X-Ray Densitometer. In the central cavity
of the elongated main section is the fuel tank. Three plastic
windows reveal the red void, a chilly container of nothingness. The next opening along the fuselage proceeding from
left to right is the oxidizer tank. It is a vitriolic green in
color, cleaner in appearance, and bored through centrally by
a standpipe. The rear exhaust, directly behind the aft instrumentation compartment, is joined to the main body by four
large red hoses. The whole apparatus is set into the posterior
orifice beneath a cylindrical casing with nine plugs attached
to the end of it terminating in a series of stranded white
wires that disappear somewhere off to the left behind a lateral
appendage clearly marked Yaw Servo.
The supposed factuality yields no information. Nothing is
known but the impenetrable surfaces.

For some, reality is not enough. Others, perhaps those whose

anxieties have been deadened by lethargy and inactivity, find
in the inert forms of reality a rare intoxication. The shapes
of the physical world, once assimilated, become detached
identities. The random dimensions of reality lose their subjectivity. Duration becomes a coefficient of weight. It is
beyond this possibility threshold that the "black-light" mural
room exJsts.
Entry to the mural hall is gained by skirting a floor-toceiling blockade. Immediately a misty carnival of space
sensations is encountered. Bloated visions of "Saturn and Its
Rings," "Moon in Eclipse," "Giant Nebulae of Orion," "Lunar
Landscape." The luminescem whites and yellows are activated
by the dim "black-light." Backgrounds are dark, velvety, vast,
infinite, spectacular. But oddly, the reverse effect is achieved.
The hall is confining, claustrophobic. If this is outer space,
any closet will do. These flat heavenly bodies are nothing
more than transposed images of mental fixity. The room a
replica of quasi-deaths.
Here, as everywhere in this labyrinth of ine.fficient senses
and circular reasons, there is a center. The Ahnighito Meteor.
"In 1956 the Toledo Scale Company built a special scale
which was assembled in this corridor .... The weight of the
meteor was discovered to be 68,085 pounds. Visitors, by
stepping on the scale platform, may see the hand of the
scale move slightly as their own weight is added to that of
the gigantic meteorite.''
More incredible than the Scale, more artificial and unreal
than the fluorescing pigment of the murals, are the unsuspect
ing visitors. Their shirts gather the impossible luminescence.
Their glowing teeth become more stellar, more remote than
the tiny specks of distant planets which surround them.
Trapped in this chamber of the unceasing Planetarium, the
duration of their stay is heavier than Ahnighito's thirty
four tons.

l. THE GLORIFIED ORRERY, FORTY FEET IN DIAMETER . . .

2. EXACT REPLICA OF AZTEC CALENDAR STONE . . .
3. COLORED PANELS OF THE SOLAR PROMINENCES . . .
4. LOAN COLLECTIONS OF ASTROLABES, COMPASSES, AND HOURGLASSES .
5. AN IMAGINARY 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 MILE TRIP . . .
6. THE LUNAR LANDSCAPE PAINTED BY HOWARD RUSSELL BUTLER . . .
7. THE ELEPHANTS AND A TORTOISE SUPPORT A HEMISPHERICAL EARTH

8. THE WORLD SERPENT TWINED ABOUT EARTH EGG .. .

9. THE BABYLONIAN IDEA OF THE UNIVERSE AS A BOX . . .
10. APOPI, WHO LIVED IN THE DEPTHS OF THE CELESTIAL RIVER
11. TWO THOUSAND TIMES THE WEIGHT OF PLATINUM .
12. THE ABANDONMENT OF SPLENDID SPECULATION ..
13. MODEL OF THE EINSTEIN TOWER AT POTSDAM . . .
14. A SHIP WHIRLING ABOUT IN THE FUNNEL OF THE MAELSTROM .
15. AN ENTIRE DAY IN THREE MINUTES ..
16. THE SO-CALLED "LAW OF THE CONSERVATION OF MATTER'" .
17. AN IMPONDERABLE, ALL-PERVASIVE, AND INTERMEDIATE SUBSTANCE
18. THE OLD LUMINIFEROUS ETHER DOES NOT FUNCTION .
19. THE BRITISH ECLIPSE EXPEDITIONS OF 1919 ..
20. SUNDIAL MOTTO: "I MARK ONLY THE SUNNY HOURS" .
21. ORDINARY X-RAYS ARE A KIND OF INVISIBLE LIGHT
22. VARIATION OF RAY INTENSITY WITH ALTITUDE . . .

1. BAYER'S HISTORIC URANOMETRIA .

2. MORE THAN 120 STEREOPTICON LANTERNS .
3. WHIRLPOOLS OF MAGNETIC ACTIVITY .. .
4. THE DARK WEDGE OF SYRTIS MAJOR .. .
5. PHILOLAUS AND THE COSMIC OCTAVE .. .
6. THE CIGAR THAT LASTS TWICE AS LONG ..
7. SHIFTING OF THE SPECTRUM LINES . . .
8. EDDINGTON'S IMAGINARY EXPERIMENT . . .
9. DEMOCRITUS AND THE THEORY OF COMETS .
10. AN IRON CEILING OVER THE UNIVERSE ..
11. BROWNIAN MOVEMENT EQUATION (1905)
12. PHOTO-ELECTRIC EQUATION (1905) .
13. A CERTAIN HAZY CONDITION .
14. APPROXIMATELY FIFTEEN TOI'-fS . . .
15. 33-INCH TELESCOPE AT MEUDON ..
16. TWELVE MASSIVE PILLARS . . .
17. TIME KEPT BY A FICTITIOUS SUN . . .
18. NORMAL TIME AT THE 75TH MERIDIAN
19. COSMIC RAYS IN THE STRATOSPHERE
20. A FIRM FOUNDATION . . .

1. FRIGID IN DARKNESS .
2. THE SPECTROHELIOSCOPE
3. THE GOD SHU . . .
4. MUSIC OF THE SPHERES .
5. THE AKELEY CEMENT GUN
6. CENTRIPETAL FORCE
7. THE VERNAL EQUINOX ..
8. A WORLD WITHOUT LIFE
9. 200 BELOW ZERO . . .

1. DRIVEN DOWN BY MEANS OF A 6,500 POUND STEAM 1-IAMMER . . .

2. THE CORONA IS CORRElATED WITH THE PERIODICITY OF SUNSPOTS
3. SUSPENDED FROM SMAll T-SHAPED BAR ANCHORS
4. "SPOT" WElDED AlONG THE lAPS AT ONE-INCH INTERVAlS
5. TWO FALSE-WORK SURFACES HELD AT EQUAL DISTANCES
6. GAUZELIKE WINGS HIDE MYRIAD SUNS FROM VIEW
7. MASSES OF OPAQUE MATTER OBSCURING THE LIGHT OF STARS
8. DESIGNED TO MINIMIZE STRAIN ON THE NECK .
9. THE GIANT APPARATUS TURNS AND TWISTS ..
10. SEPARATED FROM THE EARTH BY 240,000 MILES .
11. A DECADE OF STUDY OF CERTAIN CRATERS .
12. THE GREEKS BELIEVED THE EARTH TO BE A DISK .
13. WHITE-ROBED PRIESTS STANDING MOTIONLESS ..
14. IlLUMINATED BY FLOODLIGHTS CONCEALED AOOVE THE MARQUEE
15. THAT MANY-SIDED GENIUS-THE LATE CARL AKElEY .
16. RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER AND THE "HORNED MOON"
17. ALLEGHANY OBSERVATORY STAFF DISCOVERS "FURNACE COMETS"
18. THE BIG DIPPER, FOUND IN THE NARROW BELT CALLED TI-lE ZODIAC
19. NATURAL TENDENCY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE TO "UNITY AND SIMPLICITY" .
20. REAL COLLISION, GRAZING COlLISION, OR NEAR COLLISION
21. EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY-LENGTH, BREADTH, AND THICKNESS .
22. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS CONSIDERED A REVISION OF THE CALENDAR .

1. LIGHT RAYS ARE BENT BY GRAVITY . . .

2. MilliONS OF SMAll "MOONLETS" .. .
3. 90' IN A STIFFENING RIB ONE INCFI WIDE .
4. 326 PILES WERE NECESSARY . . .
5. ROUND IRON RODS IMBEDDED IN CONCRETE .
6. S-SHAPED OBSCURATION WINDS . . .
7. THE PREVENTION OF DISTURBING ECHOES .
8. COMFORTABLE SEATING ARRANGEMENTS
9. THE GREAT NEBULA IN ORION ...
10. IRON PEDESTAlS BOLTED TO THE FlOOR ..
11. ONCE THOUGHT TO BE HOLES IN THE SKY ..
12. HOLlOW SPHERES OF GASEOUS MATERIAL
13. ALL THE POINTS OF THE COMPASS . . .
14. IN THE VALLEY OF TEN THOUSAND SMOKES
15. EASY LESSONS IN EINSTEIN . . .
16. NEWTON AND ABSOLUTE SPACE . . .
17. SMALL-HEADED NAILS WERE USED ..
18. THE PRESENT ORBIT OF NEPTUNE . . .
19. THE SATELLITES OF JUPITER .
20. VELOCITY 12,000 MILES PER SECOND .

1. A GIGANTIC SIEVE . . .

2. ASTRONOMY FOR AMATEURS

3. A LAYER OF "ROCK CORK"
4. THE RED SHIFT .
5. THE SWITCHBOARD .. .
6. "ALADDIN'S LAMP" .. .
7. NEWTON WITH HIS PRISM .
8. THE DOPPLER EFFECT
9. RIGIDLY FIXED . . .

SHOW SHTING:
Latitude 40 N, May 31, 1966, 9:00
hours on meridian. Geocentric earth
set to 40'N Latitude, N.Y. on meridian. Red and green platform lights,
blue pans, and cove lights up.
OPI<RATION 1:
Red and green platform lights
and cove lights should be out
by end of introductory music.
2. On cue before music ends, technrcran projects slides showing
title-first part-and then photo
of bear and second part of title.
3. Lecturer fades in geocentric earth
and signals off title and bear
slides.
4. Lecturer fades in winter sun,
moves geocentric earth to dem-

all the zones on earth. (See illustration of 'the Bear' in the depiction of
Washington, D.C. undergoing an 'iceage.')
OPERATION II:

l.

1.

tion.

2.

Lecturer switches to spring sun

and demonstrates motion.

6.

Lecturer switches to summer sun

Lecturer signals for sunset clouds,

sunset and star music. Technician
starts

clouds

in

motion,

starts

tape, and fades out blue pans.

Technician, on music cues, filters

3.

onstrate its motion.

5.

Lecturer fades out triple suns,

signals for N.Y. daytime horizon,
fades out geocentric earth, fades
in Zeiss sun in slow diurnal mo-

blue over daytime horizon and

dissolves for nighttime horizon,
fading out night horizon by end
of star music.
Lecturer fades up stars.

and demonstrates motion.

7.

Lecturer stops geocentric earth

and switches on all three suns.
8. Lecturer moves triple suns over
earth.
9. Lecturer points out Tropic Zone
of earth, Arctic Zone of earth,
and Temperate Zone of earth.
Topic:
Introduction. Domain of Bear is Arctic.
Demonstrate motions of winter, spring,

summer suns over earth. Show how

each will appear or not appear from
Arctic region. Demonstrate and explain Tropic and Arctic Circles; Tropic,
Arctic, and Temperate Zones on earth.
Introduce next topic, viz, that Domain
of Bear is also our spring evening sky.
insert:
Tendency to immobilize the constellations

into

concave

grid-system.

'Stars' are projected from below, thus

inverting the temporal 'naturalism' of
the Copernican Solar System. The
'starry sky' is crystallized into square
surfaces. Ursa-Major is represented
by a slide (a stuffed Kodiac Bear)
from the Museum of Natural History.
The organic metaphor of the 'Bear'
is replaced by an abstract grid-system
that compacts all the seasons of the
year, thus eliminating the passage of
time through space. Space is almost
excluded. Time is solidified. The Arctic Circle replaces the Tropic Circles.
The 'Equator' within the actual limits
of the Planetarium undergoes a metaice-age.

Time

becomes

an

actual-

object. The stars of Ursa Major are

frozen into a global arctic that covers

6.

Signal off all slides except slide

showing Mizar as a double.
7. Signal for spectrum device.
8. Signal for motion in spectrum
demonstrator.
9. Signal off spectrum demonstrator. Technician then dissolves in
two spectroscopic binary slides
for Mizar slide.
10. Signal for slide showing Alcor
as a binary.
11. Signal off all slides.

Topic:
Big Dipper star clock. Deep space
objects in direction of Ursa Major.
Nature of Big Dipper stars.
Insert:
The third dimension is diminished.
Also tends toward binary dualisman interminable regressus against the
unity of a single star. 'Deep space' is
explained by two-dimensional slide
projections. There is no time apart
from the actual lecture-time. The mind
is brought to absolute rest for the
duration of the lecture. Moments, interva Is and sequences are coded into
a landscape of ice. Chronology contradicts, repeats, bifurcates, and gets
heavier with thoughts of the Polar
regions. MaHer is seen to be both
solid and dualistic.

The Zeiss Projector. Art work by Helmut

Wimmer.

OPERATION IV:

1.

Signal for each of four slides

showing head, paws, and hindquarters of Bear over constellation. Each is switched on at tensecond intervals.
2. Signal for slide of Jail.
3. Signal off slides.
4. Signal for music and change to
Latitude 80 North.

Topic:
Sunset, stars of the spring sky, the
Domain of the Bear. Lecturer should
prepare for next operation by setli ng
pointer stars on meridian.

Insert:
Rapid motion of the false stars produces mild nausea or seasickness.
Canned 'classical music' adds to the
effect.
OPERATION Ill:

l.

Signal for 3 x 4 slide of Big

Dipper clock (with hour hand
up in midnight position for early
March). Use diurnal motion to
demonstrate clock, stopping with
Arcturus on meridian.

2.
3.

Signal off clock slide.

Signal for slide of Owl Nebula,
M-51 (Whirlpool Galaxy) and
M-81 & M-82, all projected in
position within the constellation.
4. Signal off slides.
5. Signal for sequence of 7 slides,
showing nature of 7 Dipper stars,
switched on one-by-one, at fivesecond intervals.

Topic:
Identifying the constellation Ursa Major. Journey to Arctic.
lnserl:
Ten-second intervals are coded into
the polar regions. Ice belongs to the
ditrigonal- pyramidal type of symmetry in trigonal system. The 'Bear'
is divided and coded into that system. The 'Bear' vanishes into glacial
grids. Time does not pass during the
actual moments of these intervals,
but is crystallized into the faceted
present of the mind. The time of our
mind becomes a frozen actuality,
while the clock is forgotten.
*

Show Outline, courtesy of the Museum of

Natural History-Hoyden Planetarium. Inserts
by the author.

Drawing of dinosaur watching a bolide.

An increase in the Sun's energy.

"The End of the World"-a bombardment of meteors.

Artist's impression of the Earth doomed lo a frigid death

as the Sun gradually cools. Drawings by T. Voter.

ti
the inevitable catastrophe is at hand.
-Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka
Artists employed by both the Planetarium and the
Museum of Natural History have illustrated expendable
"conceptions" of ultimate catastrophe, based on the
more inaccessible regions of "space and time." In their

minds they have traveled into the forbidden zones, into

the dazzling realms. They have imagined dimensions
beyond the walls of time; and have established provisional limits on a grand scale in order to re-invent the
cosmos. The problem of the "human figure" vanishes
from these illustrated infinities and prehistoric cataclysms. Time is deranged. Oceans become puddles,
monumental pillars of magma rise from the dark depths
of a cracking world. Disasters of all kinds flood the

mind at the speed of light. Anthropomorphic concerns

are extinct in

this

vortex

bewildered

11

trapped

amazing

in

dinosaur"

of

and
time

disposable

universes. A

displaced

'Jbears"

dislocations.

"Nature"

ore
is

simulated and turned into "handpainted" photographs

of the extreme past or future. Vast monuments of total
annihilation are pictured over boundless abysses or
seen from dizzying heights. This is a bod-boy's dream
of obliteration, where galaxies are smashed like toys.
Globes of "anti-matter" collide with "proto-matter,"
billion and billions of fragments speed into the deadly
chasms of space. Destruction builds on destruction; forming sheets of burning ice, violet and green, it all falls
off into infinite pools of dust. A landslide of diamonds
plunges into a polar crevasse of boundless dimension.
History no longer exists.

i-I

The

Amien;;;

Lahyrinth

(France)

ROUND FOUR BLOCKS of print I shall postulate

four ultramundane margins thar shall contain indeterminate information as well as reproduced
reproductions. The first obstacle shall be a labyrinth' 1 ',
through which the mind will pass in an instant, thus
eliminating the spatial problem. The next encounter
is an abysmal anatomy theatre'''. Quickly the mind will
pass over this dizzying height. Here the pages of time are
paper thin, even when it comes ro a pyramid
The
center of this pyramid is everywhere and nowhere. From
this center one may see the Tower of Babel'"', Kepler's
universe 13 ', or a building by rhe architect Ledouxq; 1 To
formulate a general theory of this inconceivable system
would not solve its symmetrical perplexities. Ready to
trap the mind is one of an infinite number of "cities of
the future 1 i '." Inutile codes{"' and extravagant experimenrsi!P adumbrate the "absolute" abstraction( 10 '. One
becomes aware of what T. E. Hulme called "the fringe ...
the cold walks ... that lead nowhere."
In Ad Reinhardt's "Twelve Ruleo for a New Academy"
we find the statement, "The present is the future of the
past, and the past of the future." The dim surface sections
within the confines of Reinhardt's standard (60" x 60")
npaintings" disclose faint squares of Lime. Time, as a colorw
less intersection, is absorbed almost imperceptibly into
one's consciousness. Each painting is at once both menlory and forgetfulness, a paradox of darkening time. The
lines of his grids are barely visible; they waver between
the future and the past.
George Kubler, like Ad Reinhardt, seems concerned
with "weak signals" from "the void." Beginnings and
endings are projected into the present as hazy planes of
"actuality." In Tbe Sbape of Time: Rem(lrks on tbe His
tory of Things, Kubler says, "Actuality is .. the interchronic pause when nothing is happening. It is the void
between events." Reinhardt seems obsessed by this ''void,"
so much that be bas attempted to give it a concrete
shape-a shape that evades shape. Here one finds no
allusion to ''duration," but an interval without any suggestion of "life or death." Tbis is a coherent portion of
a hidden infinity. The future crisscrosses the past as an
unobtainable present. Time vanishes into a perpetual
sameness.
Most notions of time (Progress, Evolution, Avamgarde) are put in terms of biology. Analogies are drawn
between organic biology and technology; the nervous
system is extended into electronics, and the muscular

Built for Fabricu-,

L'ni\ er.sit) nf Padu3

The Pyramid

\)f

_tt

the

\.h:idurn

:;.

\'ithout a time sense

difficult to visualize." J. G.
The (herloaded ,\fun

')

Ad
Reinhardt
installation
I March 1965) Betty Parsons
Gallery

From

EureAu

Edgar

Poe's

Allan

Kepler\
\'erse

mod-:1

2
0

2
1

HGFWCBA
GHHDCBA
FGHEOCBA
EFGHDCBA
DEFGHCGA
CDHGHOA
8CDEFGHA
ABCDEFGH

3
0

4
0

2
2
3
2

4
1

4
2

3
3
4

4
4

A. Discrete Scheme JVithout

.\1 emory by Dan Graham

B. Non-code based on The

A rs AI agna of Ramon Lull

Arts lvfagazinc, November 1966

uni

Lt:dOtl\

tl73o-IK0hi

0
0

thL'

.. Ciry of the

II

Any art that originates with

a will to "expression" is not
abstract, but representational.
Space is representated. Critics
who interpret art in terms of
space see the history of art
as a reduction of three
mensional illusionistic space
to 'the same order of space

.;.!though inanimate things

our most tangible evidence
1ain

tat

as our bodies." (Clement

Greenberg-Abstract, Representational and so forth.)
Here
Greenberg equates
"space" with "our bodies''
and interprets this reduction
as abstract. This anthropomorphizing of space is aes-

thetically a "pathetic fallacy"

and is in no way abstract.

12

Plate probably drawn

Spigelius (1627)

for

13

Willem deKooning

14

Jackson Pollack

15

The

the old human past really

\isted. the conventional

hors used to describe this visible
are mainly biological." George
ubler, The Shape of Time: Rewrks on the History of Things

nowhere

THE ANATOMY Of EXPRESSIONISM(!"

nowhere.

).

the pleasure
nowhere.
let him go to sleep
liT

ohn
SJiuHc.
'arnbrid[:e :'d .I.T. Press

Dr. J. Bronov.-ski among others

pointed out that mathematics,
vhich most of us see as the most
actual of all sciences. constitutes
he most colossal metaphor im-

!a'i

lginable. and

system is extended into mechanics. The workings of

biology and technology belong not in the domain of art,
but to the "useful" time of organic (active) duration,
which is unconscious and mortal. Art mirrors the "actuality" that Kubler and Reinhardt are exploring. \"Vhat is
actual is apart from the continuous "actions" bet\veen
birth and death. Action is not the motive of a Reinhardt
painting. Whenever "action" does persist, it is unavailable or useless. In art, action is always becoming inertia,
but this inertia has no ground to settle on except the
mind, which is as empty as actual time.

must

be judged,

lestheticalh as well as
in tefms of the success of
metaphor." ;..J orbert Wiener.
rhe Humun l''lc of Human Be-

The study of anatomy since the Renaissance lead to a

notion of art in terms of biology' 11 '. Although anatomy is
rarely taught in our art schools, the metaphors of anatomical and biological science linger in the minds of
some of our most abstract artists. In the paintings of
both Will em deKooning' 1' 1 ' and .Jackson Pollack' 141 , one
may find traces of the biological metaphor 0 " , or what
Lawrence Alloway called "biomorphism 0 "'." In architecture, most notably in the theories of Frank Lloyd
Wright, the biological metaphor prevails'l7l. \'\fright's
idea of "the organic" had a powerful influence on both
architects and artists. This in turn produced a nostalgia
for the rural or rustic community or the pastoral setting,
and as a result brought into aesthetics an anti-urban
attitude. Wright's
of the city as a tcancer" or "a
social disease" persists today in the minds of some of
the most "formal" artists and critics. Abstract expressionism revealed this visceral condition, \Vithout any
ness of the role of the biological metaphor. Art is still
for the most part thought to be "creative" or in Alloway's
words "phases of seeding, sprouting, growing, loving,
fighting, decaying, rebirth." The science of biology in
this case, becomes "biological-fiction," and the problem
of anatomy dissolves into an "organic mass.'' If this is
so, then abstract-expressionistn was a disintegration of
"figure painting" or a decomposition of anthropomorphism. Impressionistic modes of art also suffer from this
biological syndrome.
Kubler suggests that metaphors drawn from physical
science rather than biological science would be more
suitable for describing the condition of art. Biological
science has since the nineteenth century infused in mosr
people's minds an unconscious faith in "creative evolu-

biological

metaphor

at the bottom of all "for-

malist" criticism.
i'l
nothing abstract a bout J-cKooning
or
Pollack.
To
locate them in a formali-5t
system is
a criti..:.1l
n1utation based on a misunderstanding of metaphornamely. the biological c:\tended into the spatiaL

16

Art Forum,
19fl5".
The Biomorphic Forne"

17

A. The Guggenheim
is perhaps Wright\
mo'lt
visceral achie 1:em-cnt.
building is more organic t!un
this inverse
tra,::t.
The ambulatories ar-c metaphorically intestines. It i" a
concrete stomach.

Ill\.

l!gs

B. Guggenheim Museum

The truncated ideas in No\'a

(Evergreen
Black
Cat Book BC-1 02) disclose
jn part the "heat-death" of
1he biological metaphor, 'The
]nsect Brain of Minraud enclosed in a crystal ... " M. L.
\'On Franz in Time and Svnchronicitv in A nalvtic Psvchology - states,
studying cybernetics have ob.:.erved that what we call
consciousness seems to con.Express

sist of an intra-psychic flux

or train of ideas, which flows
'parallel to' (or is even possibly
explicable
hy)
the
arrow' of time. While M. S.
Watanabe convincingly argues that this sense of time
is a fact sui generis, others
like Grunbaum tend to b;:lieve that entropy is the
cause of time in man."
The Voices of Time ( p. 218).
edited by J. T. Fraser. Ne\v
York: George Braziller, 1966.

20

19

Alberto Giacometti, The Pillace of Four A .i\1. ( 1932-33)

don." An intelligible dissatisfaction with this faith is very

much in evidence in the work of certain anises.
THE VANISHING ORGANISM

principle,
remains
::e'l.-..ihle to science.'' Martin
Jegger, An introduction to

unit v
;2mdy

of

garden
:ne, Cinden
.,gc,

N aturc
and
net.''

is an
fragile
T. E.

came to him with a !!.rcat

:k that not one of the
e\er :-,ecn a living thing. Not
.:.!g. a worm. a leaL They did
know wh::lt flesh was. Only
knew that. and none
hem coulJ readilv understand
t wa.., meant bY the word.'l
;anic matter'." Michael Shaara.
Jwns of the Void

A.
For further cdihcation
cnnccrning ohe!isks :-.ee A
\1/nrl lli.\tory of the EgyfJ!i(l!l
l!he/i.\/, hy W. R. Cooper.
London: Samuel Bagster and
.',ons. I 'ti77. 'The first mention of the obelisk. or Telhen. occurs in connection
\Vith the pyramid: and both
are alike Jesignated sacred
monuments on the funereal
..,tclc of the early empire, and
abo were undeniably devoted
to the \vorship of the sun:
occasionally the obelisk wa:-.
represented as surmounting a
pyramid. a position which it
has never actuallv- heen fouml
to occupy

..

The biological metaphor has its origin in the temporal

order, yet certain artists have '"detemporalized" certain
organic properties, and transformed them into solid objects that contain "ideas of time." This attitude toward
art is more "Egyptian" than "Greek," static rather than
dynamic. Or it is what William S. Burroughs calls "The
Thermodynamic Pain and Energy Bank"' tb<_a condition
of time that originates inside isolated objects rather than
outside. Artists as different as Alberto Giacometti and
Ruth Vollmer to Eva Hesse and Lucas Samaras disclose
this tendency.
Giacometti's early work, Tbe Palace at Four A.M.' 18 \
enigmatically and explicitly is about time. But, one could
hardly say that this "time-structure" reveals any suggestion of organic vitality. Its balance is fragile and precarious, and drained of all notions of energy, yet it has a
primordial grandeur'"". It takes one's mind to the very
origins of time-to the fundamental memory. Giacometti's an and thought conveys an entropic view of the
world. "It's hard for me to shut up," says Giacometti to
James Lord. "It's the delirium that comes from the impossibility of really accomplishing anything'"' J ."
There are parallels in the art of Ruth Vollmer to
that of Giacometti. For instance, she made small skeletal
geometric structures before she started making her bronze
"spheres," and like Giacometti she considers those early
works "dead-ends." But there is no denying that these
works are in the same class with Giacometti, for they
evoke both the presence and absence of time. Her
Obelisk' 221 is similar in mood to Tbe PalMe at Four A.M.
One thinks of Pascal's "fearful sphere" lost in an Egyptian
past, or in the words of Plotinus the Stoa, "shadows in a
shadow'"''." Matter in this Obelisk ' 1"' opposes and forecloses all activi[y-its huure is n1issing.
The art of Eva Hesse is ''ertiginous and wonderfully
dismal!:!;)J. Trellises are mummified, nets contain desiccated lumps, wires extend from tightly wrapped frameworks, a cosmic dereliction is the general effect. Coils go
on and on; some are cracked open, only to reveal an
empty center. Such "things" seem destined for a funerary
chamber that excludes all mention of the living and the
dead. Her art brings to mind the obsessions of the pha-

B. The Ne11 Y01k Oheli.\/,Cleop1fra's Needle by

f. Moluenice. New Yorlc:

Anson D. F .. Randolph and
Co .. I
we !-now of the
Obelisk of Karnaic, erected
by Quecn Hatasu. that the
ape:-.. of its pyrJmiJion wa:-.
covered with 'pure gold'

C. Cleopatra'.\ ,\ieedlt.\ mul

Ot!Jo Egyptiun Ohcli.\1..,\ by
Sir E. A. Wallis lludge. London: The Religious Tract Society. 1926. Regarding obelisks in Rome: "The
globe which had been fixed
Zln the top of the obelisk.
\\hen Caligula set it up was
removed:
it
was
empty.
though many: helievcd that it
\\ ould be found to contain
\ aluahle objects."

21

The following is part of a

manuscript that describes The
Palace (/f Four rl. .:\1. It was
dictated by Giacometti to
Andre Breton for publication
in the magazine ,\linu1twre
(No. 3-4, 1933. p. 42) and
later translated by Ruth YoUmer into English (see the
magazine Tru/IS/Orllllltion
published hy Wittenborn) .
"'This object has taken form
little by little: b, the end of
summer
1932 it clariAed
.slowly for me, the various
parts taking their exact form
and their particular place in
the ensemble. Come autumn
it haJ attained
reality
that its execution in :-,pace
did not take more than one
day... He abo goes on to
">a\', ..... the day-; and nights
ha-d the same color.
if
eYerything happened ju:-.l be.
fore daybreak.
"

Giocomern

PrJrfr(//f,

The

:Museum of M\1dcrn Art

Ruth Vollmer. (Jf.,/i.1k ( 1%2)

23

Quoted from
f:."uneutl.,, in
Concep1s of J\Ill.\\' in C/o.\.1icul
and ,\fodcm Ph'"'in ( Harper Torch Hook Til5711 by
1V1ax Jammer. page 3 I. On
the same page Jammer goes
on to :-.ay,
the o!ha
great exponent tlf Neopla
tonbm in the Fa:-.t, accepts
Plotinu.'l' doctrine. but with
one important modification:
the passivit) or inertia of
matter follow" from ih extension.'' The decline L1f the
categories of "painting and
"sculpture"
to be the
rcsult of
problem uf ...,pa
tial extcmion from matter,
Space
illusion on
matter

D . .\"ulambo b\ Gusta\l: Flaubert. a Berk-ele\' l\.1edalltL)ll

Book, 1966. Regarding obelisks in Bvrsa: . . . oheli'lk-,
poised on" their point"
in\'crted torches."

C. In her Loakoon based on

the sculpture by Pergamen'?
second century n.c. we discover an absence of ''pathos"
and a deliberate avoidance
of the anthropomorphic.
stead one is aware only of
the vestigital and devitalized
"snakes" looping through a

lattice
with
cloth
bound
joints. Everything "classical"
and "'romantic" is mitigated
and underminded. The baroque aesthetic of the original
Loakoon
with
its flowing
and fluid-is transformed into a Jry. skeletal
tower that goes nowhere.

B. Pergamen? Loakoon

A. Eva Hesse. Loakoon. 1965

-he individual is the .seat of a

1nstant process of decantation.
cantation from the vessel
ining the fluid of future time,
1ggiSh. pale and monochrome.
the vessel containing the ft.uid
past time. agitated and multi,]ored by the phenomena of its
mrs.'' Samuel Beckell, Proust

A. Don Jmld has been interested in "progressions'' and

"regressions" as "solid
jects.'' He has based certain
\Vorks on "inverse natural
numbers." Some of these may
be found in Summation of
Series by L. B. W. Jolle);,
a Dover paperback.

raohs, but in this case the anthropomorphic measure is

absent. Nothing is incarnated into nothing. Human decay
is nowhere in evidence.
The isolated systems Samaras'"'' has devised irradiate
a malignant splendor. Clusters of pins cover vile organs
of an untraceable origin. His objects are infused with
menace and melancholy. A lingering Narcissism'"' may be
found in some of his "treasures." He has made "models"
of tombs and monuments that combine the "times" of
ancient Egypt with the most disposable futures of science
fiction.c 2 s)

26

Self- love.

TUHE AND HISTORY AS OBJECTS

sel r- obsen at ion,

and

At the turn of the century a group of colorful French

anists banded together in order to get the jump on the
bourgeois notion of progress. This bohemian brand of
progress gradually developed into what is sometimes
called the avant-garde. Both these notions of duration
are no longer absolute modes of "time" for artists. The
avant-garde, like progress, is based on an ideological consciousness of time. Time as ideology has produced many
uncertain "art histories" with the help of the mass-media.
Art histories may be measured in time by books (years),
by magazines (months), by newspapers (weeks and days),
by radio and TV (days and hours). And at the gallery
proper-instants.' Time is brought to a condition that
breaks down into "abstract-objects'"))." The isolated rime
of the avant-garde has produced its own unavailable history or entropy.
Consider the avant-garde as Achilles and progress as
the Tortoise in a race that would follow Zeno's second
paradox of "infinite regress"101 ." This non-Aristotelian
logic defies the formal deductive system and says that
"movement. is impossible." Let us paraphrase Jorge Luis
Borges' description of that paradox. (See Al'rtftns of tbe
Tortoise): The avant-garde goes ten times faster than
progress, and gives progress a headstart of ten meters.
The avant-garde goes those ten meters, progress one; the
avant-garde completes that meter, progress goes a decimeter; the avant-garde goes that decimeter, progress goes
a centimeter; the avant-garde goes that centimeter, progress, a millimeter; the avant-garde, the n1illin1eter,
ress a tenth of a millimeter; and so on to infinity without
progress ever being overtaken by the avant-garde. The
problem may be reduced to this series:
10
1
I 10
l 100+ l 1000 -L I 10,000 --! :::

+ +

Lucas Samara ..... L 11titled, l Yh3

awareness result in an isolated mind. Thi..., l--ind of mimi

would tend to produce a
titious realit\ .. detached
from on.:.anic nature . .\lonsi('l/1. Te.1fc bv Paul Valen is
perhaps the
tion
of
Narci..,..,ism.
He
watches himself. he maneuvers. he is UTI\\ illing w be
maneuvered. He hnow'> tmly
two values. t\\ \) categories,
those of conscltHJsne:-,.., rr.:duced to ib ach: the
and the impossible. ln this
head. ''here philo:-Dphy ha:.. little credit. \\here
language
al\\ a\.., on tri:d.
1:-. scarcely' a thought
that is not accompanied b) tht:
feeling that it j.., tentative.

2g

ln 13 French .\cicncc-FicJI(!Il
Stone.\ edited
b\
Danul!l
Knight (Bantam paperhacJ...
(
17)
a ston bv Charln
HenneherL':
. ,\loonfishc!,\. "fhc lntcrplanet<Hi<m-;
were Iandin!!. in !hc:-.c "ands.
The\ \\ere ... of man\ h.ind'.
later,
the .Pharaoh
Psammctichu."
Ill
noted:
'They fell fwrn the sh. \ like
the fruib of a tlL':-trcc \hal 1.:;
shah.cn: thev \\ ele the cnlur
of copper
. . ulphur. and
some had l')c-,.'

29

The

hnoh L'iuciA /J.\l!"(l( ti(ln

and Emeolhy
\Vilhelm
Worringer. London: Routlctke
and Kc...gan Paul Ltd., ILJ5);
translated from the German
date:.,

,..J. /l.\fto!-tion

111ul f:"injuhlun:_:,

I
Jn \O far. therefore.
ao..; a :--en:.,umt.., iJbjcct ;.., -.,till
dependent uppn -.race. it is
unable to appear to u-, in ih
closed material indi,idualitv.''
And space j.., therefore lht:
major enemy nf all qri' mg
after

H. Don Judd, L'ntitled. 1965

THE CRYOSPH

BLOCK ENCODEMENT #I

010010010010010010 X 12M"' 72(1) + 144(0)

I.

orooroorooroorooro is the tentative sequence for the placen'lent of the six

solid hexagonal modules.

Each module has 12 mirror surfaces (uM).

6 modules are visible.
4. 12 modules are invisible.

2.

3.

5. 72 mirror surfaces are visible.

6. 144 mirror surfaces are invisible.
7. 66:;;1% of the entire work is invisible.
8. Invent your sight as you look. Allow your eyes to become an invention.
9. Color by Krylon Inc.

Surf Green, No.

2002

Pigment . . . . . . . . . . .
Titanium Dioxide. . . . .
Tinting material less than .
Non-volatile (from vehicle) . . . . .

. . . . . 2.92%

roo.oo%
. 5.00%

. . . . . 9.08%

Cellulose Nitrate, Coconut Oil

Modif1ed Alykd, Phthalate Esters
Plasticizer, GL-3 58 Phenolic Resin Penetrant
..................... .

48.oo%

Ketones, Esters, Alcohols, Aromatic Hydrocarbons

...................... .

. 40.00%

Halogenated Hydrocarbons

roo.oo%

Jewish Museum catalog, Primary Stmctures, 1966

38

ROBERT SMITHSON, Enantiomorphic Chambers, 1964. Painted steel and mirror.

iNTERPOlATION OF TH
CHAMBERS
I.

(I

Code ofReflcctions:

L-

. l

2.

Key to Code:

A. Right (R) corresponds to I, 2, 3, mirror reflections.

B. Left (L) corresponds to r, 2, 3, mirror reflections.
3. The chambers cancel out one's reflected image, when one is directly between
the two rnirrors.
4 Definition of the enantiomorphic within the context of binocular vision.
A. Any manifest division between the position of the two eyes.
B. Contrary accomn10dation and convergence.
C. Duplex structure of sight as an invention.

D. Infinite myopia.
E. Equidistant dislocation.
Finch College catalog, Art in Process, 1966

39

5. The surface plane (fluorescent green) is behind the framing support (blue).
One cannot see the whole work from a single point of view, because the
vanishing point is split and reversed. The structure is "flat," but with an extra
dimension.
6. To see one's own sight means visible blindness.
7. "They asked him if he still thought he could 'see.' 'No,' he said. 'That was
folly. The word 1neans nothing ... less than nothing!" The Country of the
Blind, H. G.Wells.
PARAGRAPH FROM A FICTIVE ARTIST's JOURNAL

Once, when I was fortunate enough to gain access to the private art-book library of the late Casper Cla1np, I had the privilege of scrutinizing his rare edition of "The Exhaustion of Sight or How to Go Blind and Yet See." Only six
volumes remain of this astounding work. The book's heavy pages contained
intricate diagrams "on seeing sight." A chapter called "Invisible Orbs:' illustrated special visual conditions known as "lead eyes, ice eyes, pyramidal eyes
and violet eyes." Much was said about eye-glasses as "a structure supported by
the nose and ears." The few artists that have seen this book, such as Daniel Nivalk and Mary Bone have been in some way altered. Nivalk finds the book
"suspect," but nevertheless agrees that it contains 1nany "hitherto unknown
facts about visual acedia." On the other hand Mary Bone, known in certain
circles for her "Smoke on Smoke," fmds Clarnp's book, "the key to flying
saucers." For myself, the book is a true paradigm of unending importance. I
look forward to the day when it will be published in "paperback," so that !nillions of artists everywhere will be able to share in its many treasures.

40

ROBERT SMITHSON, The Museum of the Void, c. 1967. Pencil, 19 x 24".

Tomb furniture achieved apparently contradictory ends in cliscat-ding old

things all the while retaining them, much as in our stot-age warehouses,
and museum deposits, ancl antiquat-ian stotemoms.
Geot-ge
The Shope of Time:
Remarks on the History ofThings
History is a facsim.ile of events held together by flimsy biographical information. Art history is less explosive than the rest of history, so it sinks faster into
the pulverized regions of time. History is representational, while time is abstract; both of these artifices may be found in museums, where they span
everybody's own vacancy. The museum undermines one's confidence in sensedata and erodes the impression of textures upon which our sensations exist.
Memories of "excitement" seem to promise something, but nothing is always
the result. Those with exhausted memories will know the astonishment.
Visiting a museum is a matter of going fiom void to void. Hallways lead the
viewer to things once called "pictures" and "statues." Anachronisms hang and
Arts lvlagazine, February 1967

41

protrude fron1 every angle. Themes without meaning press on the eye. Multifarious nothings perrnute into false windows (frames) that open up onto averity of blanks. Stale images cancel one's perception and deviate one's rnotivation. Blind and senseless, one continues wandering around the remains of
Europe, only to end in that massive deception "the art history of the recent
past." Brain drain leads to eye drain, as one's sight defines emptiness by blankness. Sightings til like heavy objects from one's eyes. Sight becmnes devoid of
sense, or the sight is there, but the sense is unavailable. Many try to hide this
perceptual falling out by calling it abstract. Abstraction is everybody's zero but
nobody's nought. Museums are tombs, and it looks like everything is turning
into a museum. Painting, sculpture and architecture are finished, but the art
habit continues. Art settles into a stupendous inertia. Silence supplies the dominant chord. Bright colors conceal the abyss that holds the musemn together.
Every solid is a bit of clogged air or space. Things flatten and fade. The rnuseurn spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of
generalizations that immobilize the eye.

42

WHAT IS

M?

A Dialogue between Allan Kaprow ancJ Robert Smithson

ALLAN KAPROW:

There was once an art which was conceived for the n1useun1s,

and the fact that the museun1s look like mausolea may actually reveal to us the
attitude we've had to art in the past. It was a form of paying respect to the
dead. Now, I don't know how much more work there is available frorn the past
that has to be displayed or respected. But if we're going to talk about the
works being produced in the last few years, and which are to be produced in
the near future, then the concept of the museum is completely irrelevant. I
should like to pursue the question of the environment of the work of art; what
kind of work is being done now; where it is best displayed, apart from the museum, or its miniature counterpart, the gallery.
ROBERT SMITHSON: Well, it seen1s to n1e that there is an attitude th;lt tends
toward McLuhanism, and this attitude would tend to see the nmseum as a null
structure. But I think the nullity implied in the museum is actually one of its

Arts Ymrbook, "The Museum World," 1967

Top: Installation photograph of the archi<ecture of Louis l(ahn at
Top: Entrance

Philip Johnson Gallery, Connecticut. Architect,

Philip Johnson. Photo by Ezra Stoller.
Bottom: Memorial to French soldiers at Verdun.
to

the Museum of Modern Art.

Bottom: Final inspenion of refrigerators in Kelvinator Grand Rapids

plant.

43

Top: Whitney Museum of American Art. Architect, Marcel Breuer

and Associates. Photo by Ezra Stoller.
Bottom: Mausoleum for Lenin, Moscow. Designed by the

Top: Proposed monument by Holabird and Root, Chicago.

nottom: Discocheque, Cheecah. Phow by Thecla.

Constructivist Shussev.

major assets, and that this should be realized and accentuated. The museum
tends to exclude any kind of life-forcing position. But it seems that now
there's a tendency to try to liven things up in the museums, and that the whole
idea of the museum seems to be tending more toward a kind of specialized entertainment. It's taking on more and more the aspects of a discotheque and less
and less the aspects of art. So, I think that the best thing you can say about museums is that they really <lre nullifying in regard to action, and I think that this
is one of their
virtues. It seems that your position is one that is concerned with what's happening. I'n1 interested for the nwst part in what's not
happening, that area between events which could be called the gap. This gap
exists in the blank and void regions or settings that we never look at. A museum devoted to different kinds of emptiness could be developed. The ernptiness could be defined by the actual installation of art. Installations should
empty rooms, not fill them.
KAPROW: Museums tend to make increasing concessions to the idea of art
and life as being related. What's wrong with their version of this is that they

provide canned life, an aestheticized illustration oflife. "Life" in the museum is

like making love in a cemetery. I am attracted to the idea of clearing out the

44

Top: Museum of Modern Art installation. Two Design Programs:

The Braun Company-Chemex Corporation.
Bottom: Chicago showroom for Crane Company.

Top: Bedroom Ensemble by Claes Oldenberg, 1963.

Bottom: Bathroom Beautiful, Crane Company.

museums and letting better designed ones like the Guggenheim exist as
tures, as works, as such, almost closed to people. It would be positive commitment to their function as mausolea. Yet, such an act would put so many artists
out of business .... I wonder if there isn't an alternative on the fringes of life
and art, in that marginal or penumbral zone which you've spoken so eloquently of, at the edges of cities, along vast highways with their outcroppings
of supermarkets and .shopping centers, endless lumberyards, discount houses,
whether that isn't the world that's for you at least. I mean, can you 1magme
yourself working in that kind of environment?
SMITHSON: I'm so remote fro1n that world that it seems uncanny to me
when I go out there; so not being directly involved in the life there, it fascinates me, because I'm sure of a distance from it, and I'm all for fabricating as
much distance as possible. It seems that I like to think and look at those suburbs and those fringes, but at the same time, I'm not interested in living there.
It's more of an aspect of tin1e. It is the future-the Martian landscape. By a distance, I mean a consciousness devoid of self-projection.
I think that some of the symptoms as to what's going on in the area of
museum building are reflected somewhat in Philip Johnson's underground

45

museum, which in a sense buries abstract kinds of art in another kind of abstraction, so that it really becomes a negation of a negation. I am all for a perpetuation of this kind of distancing and removal, and I think Johnson's project
for Ellis Island is interesting in that he's going to gut this nineteenth-century
building and turn it into a ruin, and he says that he's going to stabilize the
ruins, and he's also building this circular building which is really nothing but a
stabilized void. And it seems that you find this tendency everywhere, but
everybody is still a bit reluctant to give up their life-forcing attitudes. They
would like to balance them both. But, I think, what's interesting is the lack of
balance. When you have a Happening you can't have an absence of happening.
There has to be this dualism which I'm afraid upsets a lot of ideas of hum.anism and unity. I think that the two views, unity and dualism, will never be reconciled and that both of them are valid, but at the sarne time, I prefer the latter
in multiplicity.
KAPROW: There is another alternative. You mentioned building your own
monument, up in Alaska, perhaps, or Canada. The rnore remote it would be,
the more inaccessible, perhaps the more satisfactory. Is that true'
SMITHSON: Well, I think ultimately it would be disappointing for everybody
including myself. Yet the very disappointtTtent seems to have possibilities.

Top: Penthouse Dining Room, Los Angeles County Museum.

Bottom: Carl Andre Exhibition, 1966. Limestone and sand bricks.
46

Top: Proposed memorial by Benjamin Marshall, 1930.

Bottom: s,mage Tanks, Mobil Oil.

KAPROW: What disturbs me is the lack of extremity in either of our positions. For instance, I must often make social compromises in my Happenings,

while, similarly, you and others who might object to museums nevertheless go
on showing in them.
SMITHSON: Extrernity can exist in a vain context too, and I find what's vain
more acceptable than what's pure. It seems to me that any tendency toward
purity also supposes that there's something to be achieved, and it means that
art has some sort of point. I think I agree with Flaubert's idea that art is the
pursuit of the useless, and the more vain things are the better I like it, because
I'm not burdened by purity.
I actually value indifference. I think it's something that has aesthetic possibilities. But most artists are anything but indifferent; they're trying to get with
everything, switch on, turn on.
KAPROW: Do you like wax works?
SMITHSON: No, I don't like wax vvorks. They are actually too lively. A waxwork thing relates back to life, so that actually there's too much life there, and

it also suggests death, you know. I think the new tombs will have to avoid any
reference to life or death.
KAPtww: Like Forest Lawn?

Top: Wol'id's largest bureau.

Bottom: Executive Suite for year 2026 fi'Om Metropolis. Set built in

Top: Proposed museum for outer space. Designer unknown.

Bottom: Guggenheim Museum exterior.

1926.

47

Top: SOL LeWITT, MAS, 1966.

Bottom: Hydroelectric project. Hirfanli,Turkey.

Top: Guggenheim interior (empty).

Bottom: "Invisible Architecture" built by Bernard Zehrfuss for
UNESCO, France.

SMITHSON:

Yes, it's an Am.erican tradition.

KAPROW: Realistically speaking, you'll never get anybody to put up the

dough for a mausoleum-a n1ausolemT1 to emptiness, to nothing-though it
might be the most poetic statement of your position. You'llnever get anyone

to pay for the Guggenheim to stay em.pty all year, though to me that would be
a n1.arvelous idea.
SMITHSON: I think that's true. I think basically it's an empty proposaL
But ... eventually there'll be a renaissance in funeral art.
Actually, our older museums are full of fragn1ents, bits and pieces of Euro-

pean art. They were ripped out of total artistic structures, given a whole new
classification and then categorized. The categorizing of art into painting, architecture and sculpture seems to be one of the most unfortunate things that took
place. No\\. all these categories are splmtering into more and more categories,
and it's like an interminable avalanche of categories. You have about forty different kinds of formalism and about a hundred different kinds of expressionism.
The museums are being driven into a kind of paralyzed position, and I don't
think they want to accept it, so they've made a myth out of action; they've made
a myth out of excitement; and there's even a lot of talk about interesting spaces.
They're creating exciting spaces and things like that. I never saw an exciting
48

Top: Housing development, Jersey Ci'Y Photo by Dan Graham.

Bottom: Radar-observing sites. Courtesy Smithsonian As[rophysical
and Harvard College Observatories.

Top: Storage of wet collections of marine invertebrates. Courtesy

of Smi[hsonian Institute.

Bottom: Be,ty Parsons' Long Island house, designed by Tony Smith.

Photo by Jon Naar.

space. I don't know what a space is. Yet, I like the uselessness of the museum.
KAPnow: But on the one side you see it moving away from uselessness toward usefulness.
SMITHSON:

Utility and art don't mix.

KAPHOW: Toward education, for example. On the other side, paradoxically. I

see it rnoving away from real fullness to a burlesque of fullness. As its sense of
life is always aesthetic (cosmetic), its sense of fullness is aristocratic: it tries to

assemble all "good" objects and ideas under one roof!est they dissipate and degenerate out in the street. It implies an enrichment of the mind. Now, high class
(and the high-class come-on) is implicit in the very concept of a museum,
whether nmseum adn1inistrators wish it or not, and this is sirnply unrelated to
current issues. I wrote once that this is a country of more or less sophisticated
mongrels. My fullness and your nullity have no status attached to them.
I think you touched on an interesting area. It seems that all art is
in some way a questioning of what value is, and it seems that there's a great
need for people to attribute value, to find a significant value. But this leads to
SMITHSON:

many categories of value or no value. I think this shows all sorts of disorders
and fractures and irrationalities. But I don't really care about setting thern right
or making things in some ideal fashion. I think it's all there-independent of
49

any kind of good or bad. The categories of "good art" and "bad art" belong to
a commodity value system.
KAPROW: As I said before, you face a social pressure which is hard to reconcile with your ideas. At present, galleries and museums are still the primary
agency or "market" for what artists do. As the universities and federal education programs finance culture by building even more museums, you see the
developing picture of contemporary patronage. Therefore, your involvement
with "exhibition people," however well-meant they are, is bound to defeat
whatever position you take regarding the non-value of your activity. If you say
it's neither good nor bad, the dealers and curators who appropriate it, who
support you personally, will say or imply the opposite by what they do with it.
SMITHSON: Contemporary patronage is getting more public and less private. Good and bad arc moral values. What we need are aesthetic values.
KAPROW: How can your position then be anything but ironic, forcing upon
you at least a skepticism. How can you become anything except a kind of sly
philosopher-a man with a smile of amusement on your face, whose every act

is italicized?
SMITHSON: Well, I think humor is an interesting area. The varieties of
humor are pretty foreign to the Am.erican temperament. It seems that the

American temperament doesn't associate art with humor. Humor is not considered serious. Many structural works really are almost hilarious. You know,
the dumber, more stupid ones arc really verging on a kind of concrete humor,
and actually I find the whole idea of the mausoleum very hum.orous.
Our cornparison of the Guggenheim, as an intestinal metaphor, to
what you've called a "waste system" seems quite to the point. But this of
KAPROW:

course is nothing more than another justification for the museum man, for the
museum publicist, for the museum critic. Instead of high seriousness it's high
humor.
High seriousness and high humor are the same thing.
Nevertheless, the rninute you start operating within a cultural

SMITHSON:
KAPROW:

context, whether it's the context of a group of artists and critics or whether it's

Burial Mounds, Behrain Islands.

50

the physical context of the museum or gallery, you automatically associate this
uncertain identity with something certain. Someone assigns to it a new categorical name, usually a variant of some old one, and thus he continues his lineage or family system which makes it all credible. The standard fate of novelty
is to be justified by history. Your position is thus ironic.
SMITHSON: I would say that it has a contradictory view of things. It's basically a pointless position. But I think to try to make some kind of point right
away stops any kind of possibility. I think the more points the better, you
know, just an endless amount of points of view.
KAPrww: Well, this article itself is ironic in that it functions within a cultural context, within the context of a fme-arts publication, for instance, and

makes its points only within that context. My opinion has been, lately, that
there are only two outs: one implying a maximum of inertia, which I call "idea"
art, art which is usually only discussed now and then and never executed; and
the other existing in a maximum of continuous activity, activity which is of
uncertain aesthetic value and which locates itself apart from cultural institutions. The minute we operate in between these extremes we get hung up (in a
museum).

51

TH
TERMiNAl SITE

(I

If it resembles something, it would no longer be the whole.

Paul Valery

Since July, 1966 I've been rendering consultation and advice as an "artist consultant" to Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton (Engineers and Architects).
The project concerns the development of an air terminal between Fort Worth
and Dallas. From tirne to time, after studying various n1aps, surveys, reports,
specifications, and construction models, I meet with Walther Prokosch, John
Gardner and Ernest Schwiebert in order to discuss the overall plan. I have engaged in these discussions not as an architect or engineer, but simply as an
artist. The discussions do not operate on any presupposed notion of art, engineering or architecture. The problems disclose themselves, as we encounter
them. Everything follows an exploratory path.
The actual meaning of an air terminal and how it relates to aircraft is one
such problem. As the aircraft ascends into higher and higher altitudes and flies
at faster speeds, its meaning as an object changes-one could even say reverses.
The streamlined design of our earlier aircraft becomes increasingly more truncated and angular. Our whole notion of airflight is casting off the old meaning
of speed through space, and developing a new meaning based on instantaneous
time. The aircraft no longer "represents" a bird or animal (the flying tigers)
in an organic way, because the n1oven1ent of air around the craft is no longer
visible. The meaning of airflight has for the most part been conditioned by a
rationalism that supposes truths-such as nature, progress, and speed. Such
meanings are merely "categorical" and have no basis in actual fact. The same
condition exists in art, if one sees the art through the rational categories of
"painting, sculpture and architecture." The rationalist sees only the details and
never the whole. The categories that proceed from rational logic inflate a linguistic detail into a dated system of meaning, so that we cannot see the aircraft
through the "speed." Language problems are often at the bottom of most rationalistic "objectivity." One must be conscious of the changes in language, before one attempts to discover the form of an object or fact.
Let us now try to delimit some new rneanings in terms of the actual facts of
to day's new aircraft. By extracting esthetic morphologies from existing aircraft,
the same way an artist extracts n1eanings frmn a given "art object," we should
find a whole new set of values.

ArtfortJI/1, June 1967

52

If an aircraft discloses itself on an instant network of time, the result is an

immobilization of space. This immobilization of space becomes more apparent
if we consider the high altitude satellite. The farther out an object goes in
space, the less it represents the old rational idea of visible speed. The streamlines of space are replaced by a crystalline structure of tilllc. An example of this
is the SECOR surveying satellite fabricated by the Cubic Corporation. This
45-pound object enables surveyors to tie together land masses separated by
more than 2000 miles of land or water, or roughly the distance between the
U.S. mainland and Hawaii. It increases the capability of the geodetic surveying
program.
This kind of"aerosurveying" derives from a more elementary type of land
surveying. The instrument that the surveyor uses on the ground level is a telescope mounted on a tripod and fitted with cross hairs and a level. This enables
the surveyor to find the points of identical elevation. The surveyor locates the
boundaries of land tracts by measuring various sites within a network of lines
and angles. This he does with the aid of the "surveyor's measure":

Pine Flat Dam, Sacramento, California. This dam is seen as a functionless waiL When it functions as a dam it will

cease being a work of art and become a "utility." ("Site-Selection" made by Robert Smithson.)

7.92 inches
IOO links

r link
chain or 66 feet

8o chains

111ile

625 square links

square pole

I6 square poles

square chain

IO

square chains

640 acres

acre
section, or

square mile

36 sections
I
township
The maps that surveyors develop from coordinating land and air masses resemble crystalline grid networks. Mapping the Earth, the Moon, or other
planets is similar to the nupping of crystals. Because the world is round, grid
coordinates are shown to be spherical, rather than rectangular.Yet, the rectangular grid fits within the spherical grid. Latitude and longitude lines are a terrestrial syste111 much like our city system of avenues and streets. In short, all air
and land is locked into a vast lattice. This lattice may take the shape of any of
the

SL>::

Crystal Systems. " ... I saw all the mirrors in the planet and none re-

flected me ..." (Borges).

Alexander Graham Bell (I84 7-1922), known to most people as the inventor
of the telephone, was also interested in the problems of aerodynamics, aero-

Dallas-Fort Worch RegionaiAirporc Layouc Plan. (Tippem, Abbe[[, McCarthy & Stratton.)

3URE 8

jRlNG LOCATION PLAN

54

nautics, shipbuilding engineering science, medicine, electrical engineering,

and surveying. In Konrad Wachsmann's book The Tinning Point of Building, we
learn smnething of Bell's concern with "airborne structures" and how they relate to mass production. Bell designed kites based on tetragonal units, that on
an esthetic level resemble the satellites such as the SECOR. His units were
prefabricated, standardized and crystalline, not unlike Buckminster Fuller's inventions. He also built a pyramid-shaped outdoor observation station that reminds,one of the art of Robert Morris. (Unlike Bell, Morris would not want
to "live" in his art.) From inside his solid tetrahedron Bell surveyed his "flight"
projects-the tetragonal lattice-kites. A grid connection was established by
him between ground and air through this crystalline system. The solid mirrored the lattice. The site was joined to the sky in a structural equation. Bell's
awareness of the physical properties oflanguage, by way of the telephone, kept
him from misunderstanding language and object relationships. Language was
transformed by Bell into linguistic objects. In this way he avoided the rational
categories of art. The impact of "telephone language" on physical structure remains to be studied. A visual language of modules seems to have emerged from
Bell's investigations. Points, lines, areas, or volumes establish the syntax of sites.
All language becomes an alphabet of sites, or it becomes what we will call

Dam foundation site, somewhere in Texas. If viewed as a "discrete stage" it becomes an abstract work of art that
vanishes as it develops. ("Site-Selection" made by Rober-t Smithson.)

55

the air terminal between Fort Worth and Dallas. The entire project shall rest on an elevation
of about 5 50 feet to 620 feet. The area is well
drained and practically free of trees and natural
obstructions. The subsurface site of the project
contains sedirnents fron1. the Cretaceous Age.
This underground site was penetrated by
"auger borings" and "core borings." All the soil
samples encountered in the borings were visually classified and tested. These samples ranged
from clay to shale rock. The "boring" if seen as
a discrete step in the development of the
whole site has an esthetic value. It is an "invisible hole," and could be defined by Carl Andre's
1der Graham Bell in his outdoor observation station.

motto-"A thing is a hole in a thing it is not."

The "boring," like other "earth works," is beconling more and 1nore important to artists.
Paven1ents, holes, trenches, n10unds, heaps,
paths, ditches, roads, terraces, etc., all have an
esthetic potential.
Remote places such as the Pine Barrens of
New Jersey and the frozen wastes of the North
and South Poles could be coordinated by art
forms that would use the actual land as a
medium. Television could transmit such activity
all over the world. Instead of using a paintbrush
to make his art, Robert Morris would like to
use a bulldozer. Consider a "City of Ice" in the
Arctic, that would contain frigid labyrinths,
glacial pyramids, and towers of snow, all built
according to strict abstract systems. Or an
amorphous "City of Sand" that would be nothing but artificial dunes, and shallow sand pits.
The air ternlinal-also known as the Universe-rests on a firn1.an1.ent of statistics. Here

nder Graham Bell with his tetragonal lattice-kites.

statistics are the abysmal archetypes that engender the entire complex of buildings. This
ternlinal area of approximately 6oo acres is enclosed by a two-way taxi system approximately
9,000 feet in length by 3,ooo feet in width. This
inscrutable terminal exceeds and rejects all termination. The following "spaces" have been
engendered by the individual airlines:

56

TERMINAL BUILDINGS
AIRLINES. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Square Feet

American .
Braniff ..
Central . . .
Continental
Delta ..
Eastern.

. I ,400
100,300
14,500
34,400
70,700

13,700
Mexicana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 ,400
Trans-Texas
I7,700
Western
. 13,800
Total
The process behind the air terminal endlessly plans and replans its concessions, agencies,
and facilities from masses of information. Here

SECOR Surveying Satellite. (Cubic Corporation, San Diego, California.)

unit terminals are not conceived as trip terminus points. Here no gate position has a unique
location. The distribution of car traffic is nuintained by <1 central axis of roadways that develops according to statistical probability. Extra
terminal space may crystallize off this central
linear axis. Framing this central complex of terminal units are the runways and taxiways.
Width of Land Strip . . . .

soo ft.

Width of Runway (R/W)

Width of Taxiway (T /W).

150ft.

Distance between R/W

Centerline and T /W
Centerline . . . . .

75ft.

soo ft.

Distance between Parallel T /W's.

Distance between Centerline T /W

300ft.

and Aircraft Parking . . . . . .

Distance between Centerline and

300ft.

Obstacle . . . . . . . . . . . .
Distance between Centerline and

250ft.

Building Line . . . . . . . . .
. 750ft.
Maximum. Runway Effective Gradient
0.25%,
Maxim.um R/W and T /W
Longitudinal Grade . . . . . . . . . I .oo%
Maximum R/W and T /W
Transverse Grade . . . . . . . . . . . r.so%

ROBERT SMITHSON, Plunge, 1966. Painted steei,IO units,

square surfaces, 14 112 to 19" ('12" increments).

It is most probable that we will someday see upon these runways, aircraft that
will be more crystalline in shape. The shapes suggested by Alexander Graham
Bell and the Cubic Corporation show evidence of such a direction. Already
certain passenger aircraft resemble pyramidal slabs, and flying obelisks. Perhaps
aircraft will someday be na1ned after crystals. As it is now, many are still named
after animals, such as DHC 2 Beavers; Vampire T.; Chipmunk T. Mk. 20; Dove
8s; Hawker Furies; Turkey; etc. At any rate, here are some
for possible
crystalline aircraft: Rhombohedral T.2; Orthorhombic 6o; Tetragonal Terror;
Hexagonal Star Dust 49; etc.
The enormous scale of the runways will isolate such aircraft into "buildings" for short spaces of time, then these "buildings" will disappear. The principal runways will extend from I I ,ooo feet to I4,000 feet, or about the length
of Central Park. Consider an aircraft in the shape of an enom1otts "slab" hotJering otJer

such an expanse.
Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton have developed other sites that have
limits similar to the air terminal project. They include port and harbor facilities
like the Navy pier in Chicago, a port in Anchorage and San Nicholas Harbor
in Aruba. Such sites rest on wide expanses of water, and are generated by ship
voyages and cargo moven1ents. Bulk storage systems are contained by mazes of
transfer pipelines that include hydrant refueling pump houses and gas dispensers. The process behind the making of a storage facility may be viewed in
stages, thus constituting a whole "series" of works of art fron1 the ground up.
Land surveying and preliminary building, if isolated into discrete stages, may be
viewed as an array of art works that t'dllis!J as they develop. Water resources that
involve flood control, irrigation, and hydroelectric power provide one with an
entirely new way to order the terrain. This is a kind of radical construction that
takes into account large land masses and bodies of water. The making of artificial
lakes, with the help of dams, brings into view a vast "garden." For instance, the
Peligre Dam in the Republic of Haiti consists of 250-foot high concrete buttresses. This massive structure, with its artificial cascades and symmetrical layout,
stands like an immobile facade. It conveys an immense scale and power. By investigating the physical forms of such projects one may gain unexpected esthetic information. I am not concerned here with the original "functions" of
such massive projects, but rather with what they suggest or evoke.
It is important to mentally experience these projects as something distinctive and intelligible. By extracting from a site certain associations that have remained invisible within the old framework of rational language, by dealing directly with the appearance or what Roland Barthes calls "the siillulacruJ/1 of the
object," the
is to reconstruct a ne\v type of "building" into a \Yhole that
engenders new meanings. From the linguistic point of view, one establishes
rules of structure based on a change in the semantics of building. ](my Smith
seems conscious of this "sinu1lacrun1" when he speaks of an "abandoned

53

ROBERT MORRIS, model and cross-section for Project in Earth and Sod, 1966. Plaster, I X 20 X 24".

airstrip" as an "artificial landscape." He speaks of an absence of"function" and

"tradition."
What is needed is an esthetic method that brings together anthropology
in terms of"buildings." This would put an end to "art history"
as sole criterion. Art at the present is confined by a dated notion, namely "art
as a criticism of earlier art." The myth of the Renaissance still conditions and
and

infects much criticism with a mushy humanistic content. Re-birth myths

should not be applied as "meanings" to art. Criticism exists as language and
nothing more. Usage precedes //leaning. The "meanings" derived from the word
Renaissance, such as "truth," "beauty," ;md "classic," are diseased words and outmoded criteria. As one becomes aware of discrete usages, the syntax of esthetic
communications discloses the relevant features of both "building" and "language." Both are the raw materials of communication and are based on clwnce
-not historical preconceptions. Linguistic sense-data, not rational categories,
are what we are investigating. Carl Andre has made it clear that without linawareness there is no physical awareness.
Tony Smith writes about "a dark pavement" that is "punctuated by stacks,
towers, fumes and colored lights." (ArUcmtllt, December 1966.) The key word is
"punctuated." In a sense, the "dark pavement" could be considered a "vast sentence," and the things perceived along it, "punctuation marks."" ... tower ..."
= the exclamation mark ('). " ... stacks ..." = the dash (-). " ... fumes ..."
the question mark (?). " ... colored lights ..." = the colon (:) . Of course, I form
these equations on the basis of sense-data and not rational-data. Punctuation
. refers to interruptions in "printed n1atter." It is used to emphasize and clarify
the meaning of specific segments of usage. Sentences like "skylines" are made
of separate "things" that constitute a uJ/w/e syntax. Tony Smith also refers to his
art as "interruptions" in a "space-grid."

59

The impressionistic 1 world-view in1itates that architectural detail-the

window. The rational category of "painting" was derived from the visual
meaning of the word "window" and then extended to mean "wall." The transparency of the window or wall as a clear "surface" becomes diseased when the
artist defines his art by the word "painting" alone. Perhaps that is what Tony
Smith is getting at when he says his works are "probably malignant." "Painting" is not an end, but a 111eans, therefore it is linguistically an out-of-date category. The linguistic meaning of a '\vall" or "window," when emptied of rational content, becmTLes surfaces, and lines.
The nwst comiTLon type of window in the nwdern city is composed of a
simple grid system that holds panes of clear glass. The "glass wall" is a part of
!Tlany standard stores and office buildings. By e1T1phasizing the transparent glass
we arrive at a total crystalline consciousness of structure, and avoid the clotted
patchy naturalistic details of "painting." The organic shapes that painters put
on the "canvas-pane" are eliminated and replaced by a consciousness that develops a new set oflinguistic meanings and visual results.
"Sculpture," when not figurative, also is conditioned by architectural details. Floors, walls, windows, and ceilings delimit the bounds of interior sculpture. Many new works of sculpture gain scale by being installed in a vast room.
The Jewish Museum and the Whitney MusemTL have such interiors. The
rooms of these museums tend away fron1 the intimate values of connoisseurship, toward a nwre public value. The walls of nwdern museums need not exist
as walls, with diseased details near or on them. Instead, the artist could defme
the interior as a total network of surfaces and lines. What's interesting about
Dan Flavin's art is not only the "lights" themselves, but what they do to the
phenollle/I0/1 of the "barren room."
"Site Selection Study" in terms of art is just beginning. The investigation of
a specific site is a matter of extracting concepts out of existing sense-data
through direct perceptions. Perception is prior to conception, when it cmTLes
to site selection or definition. One does not i111pose, but rather exposes the
site-be it interior or exterior. Interiors may be treated as exteriors or v1ce
versa. The unknown areas of sites can best be explored by artists.
NOTE
I.

60

Im.pressionism is a popular theory derived from "symbolist theory." It has nothing to

do with individual artists. I use the word "impressionism" according to its recent linguistic mutation. The original meaning of the word is less important than its recent
usage. We are not concerned with what "impressionism" was but rather what it is
today. But it should be remembered that symbolist theory is prior to impressionist
theory.

ROBERT SMITHSON, A Heap a( Language, 1966. Pencil drawing, 6 1/2 x 22".

lANGUAGE TO
THINGS TO

lOOKED AT
READ

D/OR

( 96

Language operates between literal and metaphorical signification. The power of

a word lies in the very inadequacy of the context it is placed, in the unresolved
or partially resolved tension of disparates. A word fixed or a statement isolated
without any decorative or "cubist" visual format, becomes a perception of similarity in dissimilars-in short a paradox. Congruity could be disrupted by a
metaphorical complexity within a literal system. Literal usage becomes incantory when all metaphors are suppressed. Here language is built, not written. Yet,
discursive literalness is apt to be a container for a radical metaphor. Literal statements often conceal violent analogies. The mind resists the false identity of such
circumambient suggestions, only to accept an equally false logical surface. Banal
words function as a feeble phenomena that fall into their own mental bogs of
meaning. An em.otion is suggested and demolished in one glance by certain
words. Other words constantly shift or invert themselves without ending, these
could be called "suspended words." Sim.ple statements are often based on language fears, and sometimes result in dogma or non-sense. Words for mental
processes are all derived from physical things. References are often reversed so
that the "object" takes the place of the "word." A is A is never A is A, but rather
X is A. The misunderstood notion of a rnetaphor has it that A is X-that is
wrong. The scale of a letter in a word changes one's visual meaning of the word.
Language thus becomes monumental because of the mutations of advertising. A
word outside of the nlind is a set of "dead letters." The mania for literalness relates to the breakdown in the rational belief in reality. Books entomb words in a
synthetic rigor mortis, perhaps that is why "print" is thought to have entered
obsolescence. The nlind of this death, however, is unrelentingly awake.
Eton Corrasable
[My sense oflanguage is that it is matter and not ideas-i.e., "printed matter."
R.S.June 2, 1972]
Dwan Gallery press release,June 1967
61

The Century apartments, New York City.

By ROBERT
"THE FLOOR OF THE HOLLOW WAS A LEVEL CIRCULAR EXPANSE OF PURE CRYSTAL; THE GEXTLE SLOPING SIDES WERE
LEAD-LINED ROCK. DIRECTLY ABOVE THE CRYSTAL FLOOR, AND SHEER UP TO THE LniiT OF VISIO);, THE ATMOSPHERE
EXHIBITED A DISTANT BRILLIANCE, LIKE THE BEA:\[ OF A SEARCHLIGHT PASSI)[G VERTICALLY UP THROUGH THE
SUNLIT AIR."

-John Taine (Eric Temple Bell), The Purple Sapphire.

The Ultramoderne of the 'thirties transcends Modernist 'historicistic' realism and naturalism, and avoids the
avant-garde categories of 'painting, sculpture, and architecture.' A trans-historical consciousness has emerged in
the 'sixties, that seems to avoid appeals to the organic time of the avant-garde and that is why the 'thirties are
becoming more and more important to us, Even Clement Greenberg says the avant-garde is suffering from
"hypertrophy" (the organic metaphor is accurate). Roland Barthes refers to such a condition as the "basic
disease of the historical function," The value of temporal events in the natural histon; of lviodcrnism have
become untenable, even gross, in so far as they represent a defense against nondnrational histories. The
Ultraism of the 'thirties escapes the plague of 'social realism' of the same period, and the reaction of
organic or naturalistic 'abstract expression' in the 'fifties. The Ultramoderne was never defined by
temporal categories such as 'painting,' that is how it avoided a historicistic record. The Ultramoclerne
exists ab aetemo! Unlike the realist or naturalist, the Ultraist does not reject the archaic multi-cycles
of the infinite. He does not 'make' history b order to impress those who believe in one history.
Belief is not the motive behind the timeless, but rather a skepticism is the generating force. This
skepticism takes the shape of a paradigmatic or primordial infrastructure, that repeats itself in
an infinite number of ways.; Repetition not originality is the object. It is not an accident that
'the minor' is one of the more widely used materials of the 'thirties, and that the fa9acles of
buildings contained countless variations of brickwork. Repetition and serial order run constantly through the buildings of that paradigmatic period. An arehaic ontology puts the
Ultramoderne in contact with the many types of monumental art from every major periodEgyptian, Mayan, Inca, Aztec, Druid, Indian, etc. The Ultramoderne contains the 'primes'
that establish enigmas not explanations. The Modemist claims to originality have made
the primes less rigorous. The more exact the primes, the clearer the Time-Crystal.
There are two types of time-organic (Modernist) and crystalline (Ultraist).
vVithin the boundarie;:; of the 'thirties, that multi-faceted segment of time, we discover
premonitions, labyrinths, cycles, and repetitions that lead us to a concrete area
of the infinite. The 'thirties apartment buildings along Central Park West are
named after the bewildering and the remote-The Century, The Majestic, The
Eldorado. On top of some of the ultra-towers we discover ziggurats or models
of 'cosmic mountains.' The heavy leaden memories of monolithic civilizations
are placed out of sight, in the aerial regions that few look at. A miniature
Aztec ziggurat might be poised on the edge of an escarpment, Incessant
and unreachable limits are built not into an 'architecture,' but rather into
a 'cosmos,' that dissolves into fatigued and tired distances. Today's
artist trys to make his art refer to nothing, while the art of the 'thirties
seemed to refer to everything. But of course, today and yesterday
may always be reversed. The surfaces of most 'thirties buildings
may be viewed as topographic maps or interminable landscapes,
Brick works are permuted into rectangular 'valleys' and 'islands'
that multiply into intricate configurations. One encounters
extensive geographic topographies that suggest the farthest
spatial frontiers. The walls of these forgotten buildings from
the Riverside 1\Iuseum to Radio City bring one face to face
with the incredible features of something immortal, yet
corrupt. The arduous limits of the Empire State fill one
with thoughts of extinguishment and vertigo. The outer
walls of the Bell Telephone Building near Sixth Avenue
and 17th Street are vertiginous maps that reach
into the immensities of nowhere. Radio City is even
billed as a "city within a city"-a microcosm in a
macrocosm. The symmetrical patterns in some
Ultramoderne walls seem devised to bafBe and
to prove the notion of a demi-urge. No doubt
the 'thirties will be falsified into a style,
perhaps endless styles, or maybe it has been
already-who knows? For the 'thirties are
built on ideas that could only have origi-

,-.:

nated in the illusory depths of The Mirror of Mirrors. And as everybody knows, the mirror is a symbol of
as immaterial as a projected film. Or think of the obsolete future in H. G. Wells' The Shape of
Things to Come ( 1936). Tarnished reflections are all that remain of the 'thirties. An infinite multiplication of
looking-glass interiors, that could only spell doom to the naturalist. The 'thirties recover that much hated Gnostic
idea that the universe is a mirror reflection of the celestial order-a monstrous system of mirrored mazes. The
'thirties become a decade fabricated out of crystal and prisms, a world heavy with illusion. Never has the phantasmal appeared so solid. The mirror promises so IT!u<:h and gives so little, it is a pool of swarming ideas or
neoplatonic archetypes and repulsive to the realist.j It is a vain trap, an abyss,
col_d_disJant
people of the Ultramoderne installed themselves in many versions of the Hall of Mirrors,-Tiiey lived in interiors
delights. The overuse
of gloss and glass, in luminous skyscrapers, in rooms of rarefied
of the mirror turned buildings, no matter how solid and immob,ile, into emblems of nothingness. Building
exteriors were massive and windows were often surrounded by tomb-like mouldings and casements, but the
iP-terior mirrors multiplied and divided 'reality' into perplexing, inpenetrable, uninhabitable regions. The walls
outdoors were ultra physical, while the walls indoors were ungraspable and vain. The purist is vain enough to
imagine he is pure, but this ultimate viewpoint frightens the naturalist. The 'window' and the 'mirror' are secret
sharers of the came elements. The window contains nothing, while the minor contains everything. Consider
them both, and you will find it impossible to escape their double identity. The 'ultra-window' is a privileged
of trans-modernism. The window doubles as an open and closed space, and this is
post for those
accentuated in many 'thirties buildings. Many builders in the 'thirties such as Helmle, Corbett, Harrison,
Sugarman end Burger transformed the 'window' into an art form. By the way, the Riverside Museum was the
first building in New York City to have 'comer windows.' The window reminds us that we are captives of the
rolJm, by suggesting both flight and confinement. The ziggurated frameworks that contain certain windows show
a keen awareness of the window-as 'a thing in itself.' This is the direct opposite of The International
where the window has no meaning other than function. Forin does not follow function in the Ultramoderne
cosmos of fixity and facets. The corner window is a right-angled boundary that involves the idea of the
double or a 'split-window' from which there is no escape. The meaning of the window makes one aware
of absolute inertia or the perfect instant, when time oscillates in a circumscribed place. The
window prevents movement by setting up a transparent .barrier. An Ultraist view through the
Ultra-window brings about total conscious11ess. The direction of 'art-time' has since the
'fifties tended toward France, along the line of progreso from the avant-garde, but
that line appears to be shifting away from France and Europe towards
Sonth America and India. In fact the one line of the avant-garde is
forking, breaking and becoming many lines. Bnenos Aires is
where Jorge Lnis Borges introduced his own special kind of
Ultraism, back in the 'twenties. A group of yonng
theorizers and writers-Narah Lange, Guillerino
Juan, Eduardo Gonzalez Lanuza and Francisco Pinero-published a review called
Prisma ( 1921-1922). Later a
manifesto defined Ultraism
through various negative qualities,

says Ana Maria Banenechea, it showed an " . . . animosity toward decadent

Modernism, and toward Simpli&m." What is fascinating about South America is
that practically nothing is known about it. Like India it is a tangle of endless
unknown or lost cities-look in any World Atlas. The period of time we call the
'thirties holds the secrets of those infinite distances within its physical limits, its
buildings, staircases, windows, doors, and mirrors. The 'thh'ties become a vast
tapas, teeming with replicas of monumental 'primes.' Within what George Kubler
refers to as "repetition in general, including habits, routines, and rituals," we are
apt to discover the serial order of the enduring prime. The "history of art,"
according to Kubler, resembles "a broken but much repaired chain made of string
and wire" that connects "occasional jeweled links." To understand this 'chain'
would be like trying to retrace the pattern of ones footsteps from the day of ones
birth to the present. The prime monuments are as enigmatic as the prime numbers. The distribution of primes in the number system is irregular, but each
number is complete in itself-2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 101, etc. A prime could be a mirror
while a replica could be a reflection. The 'shape of time,' when it comes to the
Ultramoderne, is circular and unending-a circle oi circles that is made of 'linear
incalculables' and 'interior distances.' All the arduous efforts of all the monumental
ages are contained in the ultra-imtants, the atemporal moments, or the cosmic
seconds. This is a return to a primitive inertia or invincible idleness that stops
trains, jets and ships and transforms them into signs or symbols. The Time of
the 'thirties remains asleep-locked in the mirrors of a purely negative idealisma crypto-phenomenology. It would be grossly wrong to consider the Ultramoderne
in terms of Surrealism or existential psychoanalysis. All that was fascinating about
the so-called Surrealists was subverted by a kind of abstract naturalism, that
imagined itself to be 'formal.' Fortunately, the Ultramoderne was dismissed by
the 'organic' modernist, or else it simply evaded his understanding. Ultraism,
because it is aware of Time as 'fiction,' knows that belief is groundless, and so
accepts the groundlessness with a measured skepticism. The Ultraist 'doubts
his own doubt', and does not resort to despair because he knows the difference
between the feeling in cne's self and the thing felt. Temporal continuity conceals
the discrete structure of illusion; it conceals the Absolute that suggests nothing,
recalls nothing and signifies nothing. An infinite memory trace from the 'thirties
hangs in a cosmos within mental or phenomenological vaults and sinks back into
eternity. The Ultramodeme puts one in contact with vast distances, with the everreceding square spirals; it projects one into mirrored surfaces or into ascending and
descending states of ludicity. Walls, rooms and windows take on a vertiginous
immobility-Time engulfs space. The Time of the 'thirties is an infinite pyramid
with a mirrored interior and a granite exterior-reality contains the illusion or
reality encloses the illusion. The 1930's reflect the 2030's into a multifaceted
domain of chambers that progresses backwards in threes. A bipartite infrastructure
that extends forever into the future through the past. Nothing is new, neither is
anything old.

Left: Circular mirror, 1930. Right: Film stills from Andy Warhol's Empire.

THE EDITOR

( 196

Sirs:
France has given us the anti-novel, now Michael Fried has given us the
anti-theater. A production could be developed on a monstrous scale with the
Seven Deadly Isms, verbose diatribes, scandalous refutations, a vindication of
Stanley Cavell, shrill but brilliant disputes on "shapehood" vs. "objecthood,"
dark curses, infamous claims, etc. The stage should subdivide into millions
of stages.
The following is a "prologue" from an unwritten TV "spectacular" called

The T/ibulations

Michael Fried .

. . . there will be no end to this exquisite, horrible misery, when

you look forward you shall see a long forever, a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts.
Jonathan Edwards
Michael Fried has in his article "Art and Objecthood" (Artf(mun,June 1967)
declared a "war" on what he quixotically calls "theatricality." In a manner worthy of the most fanatical puritan, he provides the art world with a long-overdue
spectacle-a kind of ready-made parody of the war between Renaissance classicism (modernity) versus Manneristic anti-classicism (theater). Fried, without
knowing it, has brought into being a schism complete with all the "mimic
fury" (Thomas Carew) of a fictive inquisition. He becomes, I want to say, in
effect the first truly manneristic critic of"modernity." Fried has set the critical
stage for 11/a/lneristic 111odemis111, although he is trying hard not to fall from the
"grip" of grace. This grace he maintains by avoiding appearance, or by keeping
art at "arm's length." Fried discusses this "grip" in Anthony Caro and Kenneth

Notes on Not Co111posing (The Lugano Review, 1965/III-IV).

What Fried fears most is the consciousness of what he is doing-namely being
himself theatrical. He dreads "distance" because that would force him to become aware of the role he is playing. His sense of intimacy would be annihilated by the "God" Jonathan Edwards feared so much. Fried, the orthodox
modernist, the keeper of the gospel of Clement Greenberg has been "struck
by Tony Smith," the agent of endlessness. Fried has declared his sacred duty to
modernism. and will now make combat with what Jorge Luis Borges calls "the
numerous Hydra (the swamp monster which amounts to a prefiguration or
emblem of gemnetric progressions) ... ",in other words "Judd's Specifrc Objects, and Morris's gestalts or unitary forms, Smith's cube ... " This atemporal
world threatens Fried's present state of temporal grace-his "presentness." The
terrors of infinity are taking over the mind of Michael Fried. Corrupt appear-

Artfomm, October 1967

66

ances of endlessness worse than any known Evil. A radical skepticism, known
only to the dreadful "literalists" is making inroads into intimate "shapehood."
Non-durationallabyrinths of time are infecting his brain with eternity. Fried,
the Marxist saint, shall not be tempted into this awful sensibility, instead he
will cling for dear life to the "surfaces" of Jules Olitski's Bunga. Better one million Bungas than one "specific object." Yet, little known "specific demons" are
at this moment, I want to say, "breaking the fingers" of Fried's grip on Bunga.
This "harrowing" of hellish objecthood is causing modernity much vexation
and turmoil-not to say "gnashing of teeth."
At any rate, eternity brings about the dissolution of belief in temporal histories, en1pires, revolutions, and counter-revolutions-all becomes ephen1eral
and in a sense unreal, even the universe loses its reality. Nature gives way to the
incalculable cycles of nonduration. Eternal time is the result of skepticism, not
belief. Every refutation is a mirror of the thing it refutes-ad infinifli/JI. Every
war is a battle with reflections. What Michael Fried attacks is what he is. He is
a naturalist who attacks natural time. Could it be there is a double Michael
Fried-the atemporal Fried and the temporal Fried? Consider a subdivided
progression of"Frieds" on millions of stages.

67

R
(
He laughed softly. "I know. There's no way out Not through the
Maybe that isn't what I want after all. But this-this-" He stared at the
Monument "It seems all wrong sometimes. I just can't explain it It's the
whole city. It makes me feel haywire. Then I get these flashes."
Henry Kuttner, Jesting Pilot
Today our unsophisticated cameras record in their own way our hastily
assembled and painted world.
Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading

On Saturday, September 30, 1967, I went to the Port Authority Building on

41st Street and 8th Avenue. I bought a copy of the New York Times and a Signet
paperback called Earthworks by Brian WA!diss. Next I went to ticket booth 21
and purchased a one-way ticket to Passaic. After that I went up to the upper
bus level (platform 173) and boarded the number 30 bus of the Inter-City
Transportation Co.
I sat down and opened the Ti111es. I glanced over the art section: a "Collectors', Critics', Curators' Choice" at A.M. Sachs Gallery (a letter I got in the
mail that rnorning invited me "to play the game before the show closes October 4th"), Walter Schatzki was selling "Prints, Drawings, Watercolors" at" 3 3/1
off," Elinor Jenkins, the "Romantic Realist," was showing at Barzansky Galleries, XVIII-XIX Century English Furniture on sale at Parke-Bernet, "New

Published as "The Monuments of Passaic," Artforllln, December r967

60

The Bridge Monument Showing Wooden Sidewalks.

(Photo: Robert Smithson.)

Monument with Pontoons: The Pumping Derrick.

(Photo: Robert Smithson.)

Directions in German Graphics" at Goethe House, and on page 29 was John

Canaday's column. He was writing on The111es and tlte Usual Variations. I looked
at a blurry reproduction of Samuel F B. Morse's Allegoriwl Landswpe at the top
of Canaday's column; the sky was a subtle newsprint grey, and the clouds resembled sensitive stains of sweat reminiscent of a farnous Yugoslav watercolorist whose name I have forgotten. A little statue with right arm held high
faced a pond (or was it the seal). "Gothic" buildings in the allegory had a faded
look, while an unnecessary tree (or was it a cloud of smoke?) seemed to puff
up on the left side of the landscape. Canaday referred to the picture as "standing confidently along with other allegorical representatives of the arts, sciences, and high ideals that universities foster." My eyes stumbled over the
newsprint, over such headlines as "Seasonal Upswing," "A Shuttle Service,"
and "Moving a I ,ooo Pound Sculpture Can Be a Fine Work of Art, Too." Other
gems of Canaday's dazzled rny mind as I passed through Secaucus. "Realistic
waxworks of raw meat beset by vermin" (Paul Thek), "Mr. Bush and his colleagues are wasting their time" Gack Bush), "a book, an apple on a saucer, a
rumpled cloth" (Thyra Davidson). Outside the bus window a Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge flew by-a symphony in orange and blue. On page 3 I in
Big Letters: THE EMERGING POLICE STATE IN AMERICA SPY GOVERNMENT "In this book you will learn ... what an Infinity Transmitter is."
The bus turned off Highway 3, down Orient Way in Rutherford.
I read the blurbs and skimmed through Earthworks. The first sentence read,
"The dead man drifted along in the breeze." It seemed the book was about a
soil shortage, and the Earthworks referred to the manufacture of artificial soil.
The sky over Rutherford was a clear cobalt blue, a perfect Indian summer day,
but the sky in Eartlnuorles was a "great black and brown shield on which moisture gleamed."
69

-he Great Pipe Monument (Photo: Robert Smithson.)

The Fountain Monument: Bird's Eye View. (Photo: Robert Smithson.)

The bus passed over the first monument. I pulled the buzzer-cord and got
off at the corner of Union Avenue and River Drive. The monument was a
bridge over the Passaic River that connected Bergen County with Passaic
County. Noon-day sunshine cinema-ized the site, turning the bridge and the
river into an over-exposed picture. Photographing it with my Instamatic 400 was
like photographing a photograph. The sun became a monstrous light-bulb that
projected a detached series of "stills" through my Instamatic into my eye.
When I walked on the bridge, it was as though I was walking on an enormous
photograph that was lTtade of wood and steel, and underneath the river existed
as an enormous movie film that showed nothing but a continuous blank.
The steel road that passed over the water was in part an open grating
flanked by wooden sidewalks, held up by a heavy set of beanl.s, while above, a
ramshackle network hung in the air. A rusty sign glared in the sharp atmosphere,
making it hard to read. A date flashed in the sunshine ... r899 ... No ...
r896 ... maybe (at the bottom of the rust and glare was the name Dean &
Westbrook Contractors, N.Y.). I was completely controlled by the Instamatic
(or what the rationalists call a camera). The glassy air of New Jersey defined
the structural parts of the monument as I took snapshot after snapshot. A barge
seemed fixed to the smface of the water as it came toward the bridge, and
caused the bridge-keeper to close the gates. From the banks of Passaic I
watched the bridge rotate on a central axis in order to allow an inert rectangular shape to pass with its unknown cargo. The Passaic (West) end of the bridge
rotated south, while the Rutherford (East) end of the bridge rotated north;
such rotations suggested the limited movements of an outmoded world.
"North" and "South" hung over the static river in a bi-polar manner. One
could refer to this bridge as the "Monument of Dislocated Directions."
Along the Passaic River banks were nuny minor nl.onunl.ents such as con70

The Fountain Monument-Side View. (Photo: Robert Smithson.)

The Sand-Box Monument. (also called The Desert).

(Photo: Robe1t Smithson.)

crete abutments that supported the shoulders of a new highway in the process
of being built. River Drive was in part bulldozed and in part intact. It was hard
to tell the new highway from the old road; they were both confounded into a
unitary chaos. Since it was Saturday, many Inachines were not working, and
this caused them to resemble prehistoric creatures trapped in the mud, or, better, extinct machines-mechanical dinosaurs stripped of their skin. On the
edge of this prehistoric Machine Age were pre- and post-World War II suburban houses. The houses mirrored themselves into colorlessness. A group of
children were throwing rocks at each other near a ditch. "From now on you're
not going to come to our hide-out. And I mean it!" said a little blonde girl
who had been hit with a rock.
As I walked north along what was left of River Drive, I saw a monument in
the middle of the river-it was a pumping derrick with a long pipe attached to
it. The pipe was supported in part by a set of pontoons, while the rest of it extended about three blocks along the river bank till it disappeared into the earth.
One could hear debris rattling in the water that passed through the great
Near by, on the river bank, was an artificial crater that contained a pale
limpid pond of water, and from the side of the crater protruded six large pipes
that gushed the water of the pond into the river. This constituted a monumental fountain that suggested six horizontal smokestacks that seemed to be flooding the river with liquid smoke. The great pipe was in some enigmatic way
connected with the infernal fountain. It was as though the pipe was secretly
sodomizing some hidden technological orifice, and causing a monstrous sexual organ (the fountain) to have an orgasm. A psychoanalyst might say that the
landscape displayed "homosexual tendencies," but I will not draw such a crass
anthropomorphic conclusion. I will merely say, "It was there''
Across the river in Rutherford one could hear the 1int voice of a P. A. sys71

telTt and the weak cheers of a crowd at a football game. Actually, the landscape
was no landscape, but "a particular kind of heliotypy" (Nabokov), a kind of
self-destroying postcard world of failed immortality and oppressive grandeur. I
had been wandering in a rnoving picture that I couldn't quite picture, but just
as I became perplexed, I saw a green sign that explained everything:
YOUR HIGHWAY TAXES 21
AT WORK
Federal Highway
Trust Funds
2,867,000

U.S. Dept. of Commerce

Bureau of Public Roads
State Highway Funds
2,867,000

New Jersey State Highway Dept.

That zero panorama seemed to contain ruins in reLJerse, that is-all the new
construction that would eventually be built. This is the opposite of the "romantic ruin" because the buildings don't jill/ into ruin afier they are built but
rather rise into ruin before they are built. This anti-romantic 111ise-en-scene suggests the discredited idea of ti111e and many other "out of date" things. But the
suburbs exist without a rational past and without the "big events" of history.
Oh, maybe there are a few statues, a legend, and a couple of curios, but no
past-just what passes for a future. A Utopia lTtinus a bottom, a place where
the rnachines are idle, and the sun has turned to glass, and a place where the
Passaic Concrete Plant (253 River Drive) does a good business in STONE,
BITUMINOUS, SAND, and CEMENT. Passaic seems full of "holes" compared to New York City, which seems tightly packed and solid, and those holes
in a sense are the monmnental vacancies that define, without trying, the memory-traces of an abandoned set of futures. Such futures are found in grade B
Utopian films, and then imitated by the suburbanite. The windows of City
Motors auto sales proclaitn the existence of Utopia through 1968 WIDE
TRACK PONTIACS-Executive, Bonneville, Tempest, Grand Prix, Firebirds, GTO, Catalina, and LeMans-that visual incantation marked the end of
the highway construction.
Next I descended into a set of used car lots. I must say the situation seemed
like a change. Was I in a new territory? (An English artist, Michael Baldwin,
says, "it could be asked if the country does in fact change-it does not in the
sense a traffic light does.") Perhaps I had slipped into a lower stage of futurity-did I leave the real future behind in order to advance into a false future?
Yes, I did. Reality was behind lTte at that point in my suburban Odyssey.
Passaic center loomed like a dull adjective. Each "store" in it was an adjective unto the next, a chain of adjectives disguised as stores. I began to run out
of film, and I was getting hungry. Actually, Passaic center was no center-it
was instead a typical abyss or an ordinary void. What a great place for a gallery!
Or maybe an "outdoor sculpture show" would pep that place up.
At the Golden Coach Diner (r I Central Avenue) I had my lunch, and
72

Negative Map Showing Region of the Monuments along the Passaic River.

loaded my Instamatic. I looked at the orange-yellow box of Kodak Verichrome Pan, and read a notice that said:
READ THIS NOTICE:

This film will be replaced if defective in manufacture, labeling, or packaging, even though caused by our negligence
or other fault. Except for such replacement, the sale or any
subsequent handling of this film is without other warranty
or liability. EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY DO NOT OPEN
THIS CARTRIDGE OR YOUR PICTURES MAY BE SPOILED
-12 EXPOSURES-SAFETY FILM-ASA 125 22 DIN.

After that I returned to Passaic, or was it the hereafter-for all I know that
unimaginative suburb could have been a clumsy eternity, a cheap copy ofThe
City of the Immortals. But who am I to entertain such a thought? I walked
down a parking lot that covered the old railroad tracks which at one time ran
through the middle of Passaic. That monumental parking lot divided the city
in half, turning it into a mirror and a reflection-but the mirror kept changing
places with the reflection. One never knew what side of the mirror one was
on. There was nothing interesting or even strange about that flat n1onument, yet
it echoed a kind of cliche idea of infmity; perhaps the "secrets of the universe"
are just as pedestrian-not to say dreary. Everything about the site remained
wrapped in blandness and littered with shiny cars-one after another they extended into a sunny nebulosity. The indifferent backs of the cars flashed and
reflected the stale afternoon sun. I took a few listless, en tropic snapshots of that
lustrous monument. If the future is "out of date" and "old fashioned," then I
73

had been in the future. I had been on a planet that had a map of Passaic drawn
over it, and a rather imperfect map at that. A sidereal map marked up with
"lines" the size of streets, and "squares" and "blocks" the size of buildings. At
any moment my feet were apt to fall through the cardboard ground. I am convinced that the future is lost somewhere in the dumps of the non-historical past;
it is in yesterday's newspapers, in the jejune advertisements of science-fiction
movies, in the false mirror of our rejected dreams. Time turns metaphors into

things, and stacks

up in cold rooms, or places then1 in the celestial play-

grounds of the suburbs.

Has Passaic replaced Rome as The Eternal City? If certain cities of the
world were placed end to end in a straight line according to size, starting with
Rotne, where would Passaic be in that impossible progression? Each city
would be a three-dimensional mirror that would reflect the next city into existence. The limits of eternity seem to contain such nefarious ideas.
The last monument was a sand box or a model desert. Under the dead light
of the Passaic afternoon the desert became a map of infinite disintegration and
forgetfulness. This monument of minute particles blazed under a bleakly glowing sun, and suggested the sullen dissolution of entire continents, the drying
up of oceans-no longer were there green forests and high mountains-all
that existed were millions of grains of sand, a vast deposit of bones and stones
pulverized into dust. Every grain of sand was a dead metaphor that equaled
titnelessness, and to decipher such metaphors would take one through the false
mirror of eternity. This sand box somehow doubled as an open grave-a grave
that children cheerfully play in .
. . . all sense of reality was gone. In its place had come deepseated illusions, absence of pupillary reaction to light, absence of
knee reaction-symptmns all of progressive cerebral meningitis:
the blanketing of the brain ...
Louis Sullivan, "one of the greatest of all architects,"
quoted in Michel Butor's Mobile
I should now like to prove the irreversibility of eternity by using a jejune
experiment for proving entropy. Picture in your mind's eye the sand box divided in half with black sand on one side and white sand on the other. We take
a child and have him run hundreds of times clockwise in the box until the sand
gets mixed and begins to turn grey; after that we have him run anti-clockwise,
but the result will not be a restoration of the original division but a greater degree of greyness and an increase of entropy.
Of course, if we filmed such an experiment we could prove the reversibility
of eternity by showing the filtn backwards, but then sooner or later the film itself would crumble or get lost and enter the state of irreversibility. Somehow
this suggests that the cinema offers an illusive or temporary escape from physical dissolution. The false immortality of the film gives the viewer an illusion of
control over eternity-but "the superstars" are fading.
74

ill GLDBIGERINA OOZE AND THE BLUISH MUDS. CRETA THE LATIN WORD FOR CHALK (THE CHALK AGE). AN ARTICLE CALLED GROTTOES, GEOLOGY AND THE GOTHIC REVIVAL.

::J

PHILOSOPHIC ROMANCES. GREENSAN OS ACCUMU LA TEO OVER WI DE AREAS IN SHALLOW WATER. UPRAISED PLATEAUX IN AUSTRALIA. SEDIMENT SAMPLES. CONIFERS. REMAINS
[) OF A FLIGHTLESS BIRO DISCOVERED IN A CHALK PIT. CAUSES OF EXTINCTION UNKNOWN. THE FABULOUS SEA-SERPENT. THE CLASSICAL ATTITUDE TOWARD MOUNTAINS IS
,.. GLOOMY. A DISPLAY OF PLASTER TRICERATOPS EGGS IN A GLASS CASE. THE ROCKS OF MONTANA. GLIBIGERINA CRETACEA ENLARGED 30 TIMES IN A BOOK. THE WEARING
PROCESS CONTINUES. A CONSTANT GRINDING DOWN OF ROUGH TERRAINS. SOMETHING HAD FANGS 61NCHES LONG. KILLED OY THE HEAT OF THE SUN. THE SACRED THEORY OF
I) THE EARTH CAUSES BEWILDERMENT. SOME BOOKS CONCERNING THE DELUGE BRING CHAOS TO MANY. GRAY MISTS AND MUCH HEAT. PERPLEXED BY PEBBLE DEPOSITS. COLUMNS
<! OF BASALT ILLUSTRATED IN DE RERUM FOSSILIUM. PAINTINGS OF CRETACEOUS PERIOD SHOWN ASARTIST'SCONCEPTIONS ON LARGE PANELS. FROM 135 TO 70 MILLION YEARS
AGO. TRAITE DE PETRIFICATIONS. WOODCUT SHOWING TWO STONES FALLING FROM THE HEAVENS DURING A STORM. A DEAD TORTOISE. IN THE ZONE OF AIR-THUNDERBOLTS,
[!: E.G. CERANUNIUS, BELEMNITE, ETC. CERTAIN BEDS OF THE KEOKUK IN THE CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. THE FLAMING RAMPARTS OF THE WORLD (LUCRETIUS). DE MINERAL!
I) BUS BY ALBERTUS MAGNUS. FEATHER IMPRESSIONS EXHIBITED IN A PALEONTOLOGICAL MUSEUM. FOSSILIZED VENOM. THE TREE ONICAWHOSE TEARS HARDEN INTO THE MINER!
ONYX.IFROM THE HORTUS SANITATIS). SOME GRAINS OF SAND WERE SQUARE AND OTHERS PYRAMIDAL. CAMERAS LOST IN SHELLS AND SKELETONS.

(,) A LABEL UNDER A STEGOSAURUS SKELETON. BONY PLATES. THREE OUNCES OF BRAIN. 45,000,000. NO WORDS COULD DESCRIBE IT. CRAGGY CLIFFS, INDEPENDENT OF LIFE.
- EXTENSIVE LAKES 0 R IN LAND SEAS MARKED AS BLUE STRIPES 0 NAN OVAL MAP. PLASTIC SEAWEEDS IN THE MUSEUM. A GREAT COLLECTION OF FOSSILS IN THE ASHMOLEAN
Ill MUSEUM AT OXFORD. MUND US SUBTERRAN EUS, Kl RCH ER AMSTERDAM 1678. STONE PLANTS. JOHN CLEVELAND'S NEWS FROM NEWCASTLE 0 R NEWCASTLE COAL PITS PUBLISH EO
ill IN 1659. AGE OF CYCADS. A Fl NE CHALKY DEPOSIT (PERHAPS 0 UST BLOWN FROM RAISED CORAL REEFS). MONO LAKE-THE DEAD SEA OF THE WEST. BELEMNITES SWARMED IN THE
<l MUDDY SEAS. POETS CELEBRATING GROTTOES. THE RECENT MONKEY-PUZZLE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE JURASSIC PERIOD. WELL-PRESERVED PTERODACTYLS. THE BURNET
[!:: CONTROVERSY. MANY CRAWLED ON THE OCEAN FLOOR. DELTAIC SANDSTONES OUTCROPPING IN YORKSHIRE. A MODEL OF A BRYOZOA ONE MILLION TIMES LIFE SIZE. MEANDER
::1 lNG RIVERS. GO MY SONS, BUY STOUT SHOES, CLIMB THE MOUNTAINS, SEARCH THE VALLEYS, DESERTS, THE SEA SHORES, AND THE DEEP RECESSES OF THE EARTH (SEVERIN US).
1 IN BRITAIN THE JURASSIC CONSISTS MAINLY OF OOLITES AND CLAYS. 'RHAETIC BEDS. SEVERAL LAND-MASSES NOT SHOWN ON A MAP. LUXURIANT VEGETATION. PARADISE LOST.
INVASION OF THE OCEAN. ARCHAEOPTERYX. FLESH-EATERS WALKED ON THEIR HI NO LEGS USING THEIR FORE LIMBS FOR GRABBING PREY. BONES WITH AIR CAVITIES SHOWN IN
LINE DRAWING. LOW TIDE. DEAD JELL YFISH IN A LAGOON. PAINTING OF FERN FOREST. POST CAR OS OF ZION CANYON. A BOOK ON URANIUM. AN ARTIST'S CONCEPTION OF
DINOSAURS IN A SWAMP. CHART TELLS OF THE EVOLUTION OF WASTE. OVER-EXPOSED PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE SUNDANCE SEA. A NOVEL ABOUT THE LIFE OF AN ICHTHYOSAUR.
NO ICE SHEETS MARKED THE POLES. INFRA-REO PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE GULF OF GEOSYNCLINE.

l OBSCURE VALLEYS. DATA FROM DRILLED HOLES. HE MAY EVEN NOW-IF I MAY USE THE PHRASE-BE WANDERING ON SOME PLESIOSAURUS-HAUNTEO OLLITIC CORAL REEF, OR

" BESIDE THE LONEL YSAL/NE LAKES OF THE TRIASSIC AGE (H.G. WELLS). TRACKS OF DINOSAURS DISCOVERED AT TURNERS FALLS, ON THE CONNECTICUT RIVER IN MASSACHUSETTS. THE COLUMNAR JOININGS OF THE PALISADES. INERT, ALL SLIDES INTO A LOST MOMENT. A CLIFF BELOW THE WEST END OF THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE. VOLCANIC
VAPORS. AT THE CHILLED ZONE. A RESTORED SECTION OF A TRIASSIC FAULT BLOCK SHOWING LAVA DIKES. A OOOK IS A PAPER STRATA A COLORED PHOTOGRAPH OF THE
PETRIFIED FOREST, ARIZONA. A LANDSLIDE OF MAPS. ECLIPSE OF THE MOON. GYPSUM. AN ILLUSTRATION FROM THE PALESTECTONIC ATLAS. DYING IN THE YUKON AMID THE
PLUTONIC ROCKS. TECTONIC ISLANDS SU RRO UNOEO BY GREEN FOAM . ... NOTHING CAN APPEAR MORE LIFELESS THAN THE CHAOS OF ROCKS... (DARWIN). SOUTH ERN ELLESMERELANO. ABUNDANT QUANTITIES OF GRANULAR MINERALS. THE EXHUMED PRE-LATE TRIASSIC PENEPLANE CAN BE SEEN NEAR THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE. A GENERALIZED
GEOLOGIC CROSS SECTION SHOWING MAGMA OFFSHOOTS. A DIAGRAM SHOWING A FAULT ZONE. WEDGES OF SEDIMENTARY STRATA. A PHOTOGRAPH OF ROTTEN DIABASE. RAPID
HEAT LOSS. A RESTORATION OF A ICARDSAURUS. FALL ZONE. SWASH. 600,000 CUBIC YARDS OF SOMETHING. A BLOCK DIAGRAM SHOWING DRIFT. BARRIERS OF MUD. THE EAR LIES)
OF THE THREE GEOLOGICAL PERIODS COMPRISED IN THE MESOZOIC ERA (DICTIONARY OF GEOLOGICAL TEAMS). BLACK HEATHS, WILD ROCKS, BLACK CRAGS, AND NAKED HILLS
(CHARLES COTTON).IN THE WAKE OF LAVA FLOWS. CHOMATIC EMULSIONS OF NAMELESS ROCKS. A NARROW RANGE OF GREY TONALITIES. THE ANONYMOUS SURFACE UNIFORMIT'
DF MUSEUM PHOTOGRAPHS. DEGENERATE TECHNIQUES. DISPLAYS IN PLASTIC.

Aspen, no. 8, Fall-Winter 1970-71, issue edited by Dan Graham.

Some words are illegible in this article because of the worn folds in the pages of the only copy of the original available to us.

[)VINCE OF PERM IN RUSSIA. EVAPORATION CAUSES LAND TO SHRINK. CONTINENTAL DRIFT. A DRAWING OF THE SKULL OF THE REPTILE ELGINIA (RELATED TO
SAURUS, FROM PERMIAN SANDSTONE IN ELGIN, N.E. SCOTLAND, DRAWN TO DNEIlUARTER NATURAL SIZE). THROUGH THE EYES OF DIMETRODON. PERMIAN ICE AGE.
-HE PULSATING MOVEMENT OF GLACIERS IS DUE TO THE PROPERTIES OF ICE ITSELF AND IS ASSOCIATED WITH THE PERIODIC ACCUMULATION AND REMOVAL OF ELASTIC
IN POLYCRYSTALLINE AGGREGATE (P.A. SHUMSKI). HOT DESERT CONDITIONS. NOTES REGARDING FORAMINIFERA. REMAINS OF SLOW WADDLING CREATURES FOUND IN
AND SOUTH AFRICA. SEAS WERE CUT-OFF FROM THE OCEAN, UNTIL THEY OECAME INCREASINGLY SALINE. DRASTIC CHANGES OF THE LANDSCAPE TAKE PLACE. A VOLCANO
JING TO HUTTON IS A SPIRACLE TO A SUOTERRANEAN FURNACE. FANTASTIC IDEAS WERE LATER CAST ASIDE BY THE PLUTDNISTS SOLIDIFIES IN GRANITE FAUST SAYS
'::K TO ROCK.... THE NEPTUNIAN TH ED RY. THE SYMMETRY 0 F THE EARTH WAS THOUGHT TO OE SPOILED. MD DEAN DROE AS DF INSE.CTS EMERGE. A SPIRALLy COILED BAN 0
TH BELONGED TO HELICOPRION. DWARF FAUNA. ONE SENTENCE DEVOTED TO INSECTS IN A CHAPTER ON THE PERMIAN PERIOD. STEREOSCOPIC VIEWS OF THE GUADALOUPE
lANCES OF CHANGING LIGHT OVER RECONSTRUCTIONS OF DECIDUOUS TREES. SNAPSHOTS OF POISON GAS. DIORAMA OF ASH HEAPS. DAGUERREOTYPE SHOWING VAST
TS OF SALT AND GYPSUM. EQUATOR IN OKLAHOMA. SPOILED PHOTOGRAPHS OF SAND DUNES. PHOTOMICROGRAPHIC STUDIES'OF FOSSIL FROST. AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS OF
TION. STRATIGRAPHIC MAP OF Dl L DEPOSITS. MISPLACED 00 UN DARIES. SHIFTS IN POLAR AXIS RECD AD ED. EVAPD RAT! ON 0 F SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE. MARATH 0 N
.AIN SKETCHED. JOURNALS DEVOTED TO RADIATION DAMAGE. UNDEVELOPED FILM OF DRY LAND MASS. NEGATIVES OF SHELLY ORGANISMS. A BOOK ON EDAPHDSAURUS.
:SLIDES OF PERMIAN PRAIRIES .

.AL PERIOD. GEOGRAPHY OF THE LOWER CARODNIFEROUS PERIOD SHOWN ON AN OVAL MAP, WITH OLACK DOTS SYMODLIZING LAND PLANTS. SLUG-LIKE CREATURES GLIDE
EAD CALAMITES. TERRIGENOUS CLASTIC SEDIMENTS EXTENDED TO A LINE PASSING WEST OF MICHIGAN. EARTH WARPAGE. PHOTOGRAPH OF LIMESTONES NEAR OLDDMING
DIANA. NATURE IS NOT THE STARTING POINT. ALL ROUND THE COAST THE LANGUID AIR 010 SWOON... (TENNYSON). PURELY STATIC SHAPES, CLUMPS GLIMPSED THROUGH
'ES OF ERYDPS. THE BRITISH MUSEUM BUILT I 024. THE GL YPTOTH EK IN MUNICH 101 fil 034. AS OECA Y AND DEATH OVERTOOK THESE FOREST GIANTS THEY EVENTUALLY
oO INTO THE MUOANO OOZE SURROUNDING THEM (CHARLES R.KNIGHT). THE IMMUTABLE CALM IN THE STEAMING SWAMPS. THINGS FAIL TO APPEAR. WORDS SINKING INTO
CK AND MIRE. COLLECTING THE FOSSIL AND SENDING IT TO THE MUSEUM IS ONL YPART OF THE STORY (EDWIN H. COLBERT). A CAMERA DBSCURA REPRODUCES A PALED
31C MAP. THE SPLITTING OF MARINE OEDS. ERODED OUT. DIAGRAM SHOWING EUSTATIC MOVEMENT-RISE AND FALL OF SEA LEVEL OF 100 FEET IN 400,000 YEARS. EPEIRD
OINKING. IT IS IN THE MUSEUM-URGE THAT OUR LEARNING SHOWS A FACE TURNED TOWARDS THE THINGS OF DEATH (ERNST JUNGER). A HEAP BETWEEN FORGETFULNESS
oMD RY. P. RECDNSTRUCTI ON OF AN EARLY CARODNI FE RO US (MISSISSIPPIAN) SEA AS IN NO
IN DIANA. (THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION). IN THESE NATURAL
;;,-;_;;,
;j ;_;;,; ;:::;, .. 1;.,,.,, .:;
, ,;.,;
, ;. :;:
:=:- :._
: ;- S Q:.. GS:!.: : (.<::.
?.
c;_! n: '":. ''
JIG MAP OF THE CANADIAN APPALACHIAN REGION. UNSTAOLE CONTINENTS. SEDIMENTS ON THE EAST SHORE OF THE BAY OF FUNDY AT JOGGINS, NOVA SCOTIA. SOUNDLESS
ARTIFICIAL L1 GHT. AQUATINT ENG RAVINGS DF FOSSILS.

tUANTITIES OF PEBBLES, SAND AND MUD. OEVDNSHIRE .... APPARENTL Y THE

OF SOME GIGANTIC STRUCTURES OF ART... (POE). THE WORLD THROUGH THE EYES OF
!'JIAN LUNG FISH. POLISHED PIECES OF SILICA ROCK. FUNGAL THREADS AND RESTING SPORES. SUNSHINE ON THE PETRIFIED DEPOSITS. A LAKE LOST UNDER THE DEBRIS.
:SHELLS. FOSSIL FOREST EXHIBITED IN A DIORAMA IN THE NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM. EDSPERMATDPERIS IS PROMINENT. MOSS. ANTERIOR MEMORIES. LAYER UPON
UNLESS THE INFORMATION GAINED FROM THE COLLECTING AND PREPARING OF FOSSILS IS MADE AVAILABLE THROUGH THE PRINTED PAGE, ASSEMBLAGE SPECIMENS IS
"ALLY A PILE OF MEANINGLESS JUNK (EDWIN H. COLBERT). A DOUBT WHICH TURNS TO NEGATION, OUT FEIGNED NEGATION. DENDRDIDS AND GRAPTOLITES DISAPPEAR.
IME ACCUMULATES. A MODEL SHOWING HOW A VOLCANO ERUPTS. TREE FERNS DECAY INTO FLORA CEMETERIES. RECONSTRUCTION OF LATE DEVONIAN SEA BOTTOM IN
N NEW YORK; DIORAMA (CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM), A FAINT ILLUSIONISTIC BACKDROP EXTENDS A FALSE UNDERSEA LANDSCAPE. JAWLESS FISHES IN GRAY
A GAZE EQUAL TO SPACE. THE BURDEN OF MILLIONS OF YEARS. ONLY THE GREAT HORIZONS OF THE ABSENT WORLD REFLECT IN THE MIND. THE POTHOLES OF A WEAK
'ITIDN. MIRAGES ON THE VOLCANIC PLAINS. FOSSILIFEROUS ROCKS CRUMBLE IN MAINE. QUARTZ IN THE BRAIN. ACADIAN DISTURBANCE. THE AGE OF FISH. THE AGE OF
THE AGE OF CALMS. MILLIONS OF YEARS PAST. A FAMOUS FOSSIL DELTA IN THE CATSKILLS. SPIDERS AND WINGLESS INSECTS ALSO ARRIVED. UPLIFT IN THE MIDST OF THE
JMPLETE BLINDNESS. AN UNKEMPT CEMETERY OF ANNULARIA. THE DEVONIAN PERIOD IS A SUCCESSION OF LDS.SES. AT OUTSKIRTS OF MUD. SPASMODIC CHRONOLOGY .
.AT A. EXHIBITION OF PLACDDEnMS.

oDS WITH LIMY SKELETONS. SUBMARINE TROUGHS DEEPEN. STONE-LILIES. BRIGHT COLORED POLYPS SPREAD. NEW MOUNTAIN RANGES APPEAR, THEIR NAMES ARE
oRIAL-DULL DESCRIPTIONS IN A BOOK. THESE SILURIAN TERRAINS EXIST BY CONCEALMENT. NOTHING BUT BLAND REFERENCES TO A VAGUE SET OF GEOLOGIC
TIDNS. THE EARTH DIPS OUT OF SIGHT, ALL THE ACTIVITY IS LOST UNDER THE LIMPID OCEANS. ALL IS SEDIMENTATION AND AIMLESS EFFORT. THE SILURIAN NIGHT
-HE NINE FOOT SEA SCORPIONS INTO TOTAL DARKNESS, WHERE THEY LIVED MAINLY IN ESTUARIES AND COASTAL LAGOONS. SILENCE, DARKNESS, AND DISMAL PERFEC
CANNOT DISCOVER THIS OCEANIC FEELING IN MYSELF (FREUD). MASSIVE HEAPS OF SKELETONS CAPABLE OF WITHSTANDING BUFFETING IN ROUGH WATER. CORAL
JDWN. FLOATING GRAPTOLITES. MANY SANK TO THE BOTTOM. SHALE. 400 MILLION YEARS AGO. PERIODIC ALTERNATION OF THE LEVEL OF LAND AND SEA. LESS VOLCANIC
rY THAN IN 0 R0 DVICIAN TIMES. UN DE ASEA MD UNTAINS, RAVINES AND VALLEYS. CRUSTAL MOVEMENT. TRAVE ATIN E. SWAMP TREASURE. DRAWINGS DF SIN KHD LES AND
iS. THINKING OF THE TUNDRA NEAR HUDSON BAY. THE MID-CONTINENT IS A RELIEF OF FEATURELESS FEATURES. OVER THE SCAFFOLDING OF THE MARATHON TROUGH.
I CHLORIDE IN THE EYES. ONLY TWO DIMENSIONS EXIST. HOURS AND DAYS ON LLANO RIA. YESTERDAYS ARE DEFORMED. MONOCHROME MAPS. NO RECORD OF LIFE ON
i'JO. FUTURE TIME UNDER SALTY SEAS. RECREATING CRINOIDS. HAZE. PERIODS OF ABANDONMENT. THE LIMITS OF THE MICHIGAN BASIN. A VAST AND HIDEOUS CONTINENT.

:Z

ARENIG AND SI<IDOAWSLATES. SPONGES WITH A FRAMEWORK OF SILICA, THROVE AT VARIOUS DEPTHS. VOLCANOES ERUPTED UNDER THE OCEAN. PAINTING SHOWING AN

<il ORDOVICIAN SOUTH DAKOTA. THE MUD GROVELLING; AM PYX. FORGOTTEN PILES OF SANDSTONE. OCEAN FLOOR COLLAPSES. ROTTEN VEGETATION DECOMPOSES INTO ROTTEN
ROCK. MAGNESIA. NO LONGER A FAITHFUL IMITATION OF ETERNITY, BUT A CONSTANT STATE OF EROSION. THREE STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A THRUST FAULT, SHOWN
IN A LINE DRAWING. DISLOCATED BY A MOL TEN CONDITION. THE BURIAL OF THE BRYOZOA. FOR ,WHERE THINGS ARE DISCERNED AT INTERVALS OF TIME, THERE ARE FALSE;;. HOODS; AND WHERE THINGS HAVE AN ORIGIN IN TIME, THERE ERRORS ARISE (ASCLEPI US). OECREPITUO E AN 0 DELl QUESCENCE. BOTCHED FABRICATIONS ON THE FOGGY
0 LANDSCAPE. PLANKTONIC CALCAREOUS 0 RGANISMS FALLIN G. CAREFULLY LABELED SPECIMENS ARE Fl LED AWAY. A TEDIOUS PART OF FOSSIL COLLECTING TAKES PLACE
bl UNDER THE HDT SUN IN THE BAD LANDS. QUICKSAND. DIAGRAM WITH 0 RANGE BACKGROUND SHOWS HOW ROCK RESISTANCE INFLUENCES TOPOGRAPHY. A SORT 0 F JiGSAW
,,. PIJZZLE FOR GEOLOGISTS. X-RAY \/!FW OF Atil OIL WEI I A liGHT AliJE l',Nn TAN

i!!\1Ttr1

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C) WANDERING WATERS. G'EDLOGY EXEMPLIFIES A-NEW IDEA IN PAPERBACK PUBLISHING-A s{iliESiiFOUTSTANDING BOOKS, ILLUSTRA-TEO-THIWUGHOUTfrVFiH[ COLORTAKE
BONNEVILLE HAS SHRUNK. VAST STRETCHES 0 F SALT FLATS. EVAPO RAT I 0 N. OLD FAITHFUL- YELLOWSTDN E'S FAVD RITE GEYSER. LOCCO LITHS. PRO FILE 0 FA SHIELD VO LCAN 0
HM/AII'S MAUNA LOA. PTOLEMY GUESSED THAT THE EARTH IS A BALL. OUACHITA. BLUE INK ON TEXAS. CANADIAN SHIELD SINKS. THE OZARK DOME PAINTED ON A MAP AS A
BLUR. IMPRESSIONISTIC DRAWINGS OF THE ARCTIC.

GONDWANALAND? REEFS FORMED CORALLINE SPONGES (ARCHAEOCYATHINES). THE GREAT THICKNESS OF BLACK MUD. THE ROMAN NAME FOR WALES. BOTTOM LIVING FORMS
<:( WERE BLIND. PAXAOOXIDES SHOWN IN A LINE-CUT ARE SAID TO BE HALF NATURAL SIZE. MUNDUS SUBTERRANEUS. PUTTING FACTS TOGETHER LIKE A JIGSAW PUZZLE. LANGUAG
- AND SOIL BLOW AWAY. FLOODS. BILATERALLY SYMMETRICAL CREATURES. AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE AUSTRAL SEA (BLUE ON GRAY DOTS). A FRAGMENTARY THEORY. EXCAVA
1:1: TIONS AT DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT IN NORTHEASTERN UTAH. PALAEOZOIC ERA SHOWN ON AN OLD CHART. LITTLE IS KNOWN ABOUT THE LAND AREAS. THEY PLOUGHE[
ill THEIR WAY THROUGH THE MUD. WORMS AND MORE WORMS TURN INTO GAS. SEA BUTTERFLIES FALL INTO A NAMELESS OCEAN. PLASTER RESTORATIONS COLLECTING OUST IN
THE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. THE TRACKS DFTRILOBITES HARDEN INTO FOSSILS. ACCUMULATIONS OF WASTE ON THE SEA BOTTOMS. JELLY-FISH BAKING UNDER THESU1
<l: DIGESTIVE SYSTEMS SHOWN IN DIAGRAMS . ... A TENDENCY TO AMORPHOUSNESS... (HEINRICH WOLFFLIN) .... SCABBY TOPOGRAPHY ON SOLFATARA PLATEAU (C. MAX BAUER). MAY
(J HAVE l.DD KED Ll KE THE PLANET VENUS. LIMP-LOOKING CRUSTACEANS, DYING BY THE Ml LLIO NS. WILL YOU FOLLOW ME AS FAR AS THE SARGASSO SEA' (GI 0 RG I 0 DE CHIRICO).
CONGLOMERATE THOUGHTS. MOLLUSCA. BREAKING APART INTO PARTICLES. SOMETHING FLOWING BETWEEN THE CARIBBEAN AND NEWFOUNDLAND. THE EQUATOR OVER NEW
MEXICO MADE OF DOTS AND DASHES. (PORIFERA). BELTS OF SCATTERED ISLANDS. LLANO RIA SOUTH OF LOUISIANNA. MOUNTAINS OF JELLY FISH. THE DIMENSIONS QF AN
UNKNOWN SLIME. LIME-SECRETING COLLEN lA. A GLOBE SHOWING THE APPALACHIAN TROUGH. GALLERIES FULL OF ODD NAMES AND MODELS. CLOUDS MADE OF PAPER. A DRAWING OF CASCADIA DRAWN PARALLEL TO THE PACIFIC COAST. A GUIDE TO GRIT.

MEMORY AT THE CHTHDNIC LEVEL. FLOATING ON SOFT MUDS NEAR THE BLIND RIVER. PINK FOSSILS. OBSCURE TRACES OF LIFE. HALFTONE PICTU".ES OF STRATIFIED IIOCKS.
RECONSTRUCTIONS OF SANDSTONES IN SQUARE GLASS CASES. HOT WATER. RIDDLE OF THE SEDIMENTS. LOST IN THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. BEACc:ED. BOILING, BUBBLINI
OF THF
SUCCESSIONS OF ROCK UNITS IN SEVERAL DISTRICTS. IGNEOUS MEANING FIRE. WE LIVE AMID THE WRECK OF FORMER WORLDS (JEROME WYCHOFF, OUR CHANGING EARTH
THROUGH THE AGES-FULLY ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND PAINTINGS). THIS PERIOD IS LOSING ITSELF IN SAND ANQ PAGES. THE REGION BEGINS TO DISSIPATE. AN
AERIAL PHOTO SHOWING THE DRIFT OF LAVA. SOME THOUGHTS ARE SINKING INTO THE CONGLOMERATE. LOGAN PASS IN GLACIER NATIONAL PARK IS MADE OF CRUSTAL BLOC I
THE AGE 0 F POTASSIUM-ARGON. GEOLOGICAL GHOSTS 0 NTH E PAGES OF A BOOK ON VIR USES. ANIMALS WITH OUT BACKBDN ES TURN INTO STDNE.IF ONLY THE GEOLOGISTS
WOULD LET ME ALONE, I COULD 00 VERY WELL, BUT THOSE DREADFUL HAMMERS (JOHN RUSKIN). GRAPHITE (A CRYSTALLINE TYPE OF CARBON). SLIMY DAYS. STEAMING
GEYSER BASINS (NOBO OY'S YELLOWSTONE). COUNTERFEIT ALGAE IN THE MUSEUM. BUR ROWS IN AMOUNT AIN 0 F CO RR UPTIDN .. ..THE QUEER FLOATING BASKET-LIKE VARIETY..
(CHARLES R. KNIGHT). HEAPS OF CARBONATE LIME. POURING TONS OF MINERAL MATTER INTO A LAKE. IMITATION GRANITE. LAYERS OF OUT-DATED MAPS. XENUSIDN. PETRI FIE
SCUM ON DISPLAY. MAP OF THE MISSING SEA. EXTINCT SPONGE-LIKE THINGS. STEAM. CHARTS SHOWING CLAY FORMATIONS. THE PILING UP OF OEBRIS .. ..FUT/LE AND STUPID
STAGNA T/ON... (HENRY ADAMS). STALE TIME. ONE-CEL LEO NOTHINGS. ABSENCE 0 F OXYGEN.

!!: CONTINENTS. PHOTOGRAPH OF BANDED REO CHERT OR JASPER IN THE SOUDAN MINNESOTA (MINNESOTA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY). A GRAFT SHOWING THE
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MUSEUM OF lANGUAGE IN THE VICINITY OF ART

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She took one or two of them down and turned the pages over; trying to
per-suade herself she was reading them. But the meanings of wor-ds
seemed to dart away from her- like a shoal of minnows as she advanced
upon them, and she felt mor-e uneasy still.
Michael Frayn, Against Entropy
Ad Reinhardt: "The Four Museums are the Four Mirrors"

In the illusory babels of language, an artist nught advance specifrcally to get

lost, and to intoxicate himself in dizzying syntaxes, seeking odd intersections of
1neaning, strange corridors of history, unexpected echoes, unknown humors,
or voids of knowledge ... but this quest is risky, full ofbottomless fictions and
endless architectures and counter-architectures ... at the end, if there is an
end, are perhaps only meaningless reverberations. The following is a mirror
structure built of macro and micro orders, reflections, critical Laputans, and
dangerous stairways of words, a shaky edifice of fictions that hangs over inverse
syntactical arrangements ... coherences that vanish into quasiexactitudes and
sublunary and translunary principles. Here language "covers" rather than "discovers" its sites and situations. Here language "closes" rather than "discloses"
doors to utilitarian interpretations and explanations. The language of the artists
and critics referred to in this article becomes paradigmatic reflections in a
looking-glass babel that is o1bricated according to Pascal's remark, "Nature is
an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is
nowhere." The entire article may be viewed as a variation on that much nusused remark; or as a monstrous "museum" constructed out of multi-faceted
surfaces that refer, not to one subject but to many subjects within a single
building of words-a brick

a word, a sentence

floor of roon1s, etc. Or language becol/les an infinite

a room, a paragraph

illliSClflll,

whose center is et;ery-

where and whose li111its are nowhere.

MARGINALIA AT THE CENTER: INFRA-CRITICISM

Dan Flavin deploys writing as a pure spectacle of attenuation. Flavin's autobiographical method is mutated into a synthetic reconstitution of memories, that
brings to mind a vestigial history. "Now there were battered profiles ofboxers
with broken noses and Dido's pyre on a wall in Carthage, its passionate smoke
piercing pious Aeneas' faithless heart outbound in the harbor below." ( ... in

daylight or cool white, "Artforum," December 196 5). Flavin's Carthage is an arsenal of expired metaphor and fevered reverie. His grandiloquent remembrances
play on one's poetic sense with a mournful giddiness. In his sentence we find a
disarming uselessness that echoes the outrages of SalallllllUO. "The walls were
Art International, March 1968
78

covered with bronze scales; and in the midst, on a granite pedestal, stood the
statue of the Kabiri called Aletes, the discoverer of the mines in Celtiberia. On
the ground, at its base, and arranged in the form of a cross, lay broad gold
shields and monstrous silver vases with closed necks, of extravagant shape and
of no possible use ...." Flavin's writings like Haubert's "vases" are of "no possible use." Here we have a chronic case of mental immobilization that results in
leaden lyrics. Language falls toward its final dissolution like the sullen electricities of Flavin's "lights." His slapstick "letters to the editor" also call forth the
assorted humors of Haubert's Bouvarrf et Pecuchet-the quixotic autodidacts.
Carl Andre's writings bury the mind under rigorous incantatory arrange-

Announcement for Sol LeWin's exhibition at the Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles, 1967.

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79

ments. Such a method smothers any reference to anything other than the
words. Thoughts are crushed into a rubble of syncopated syllables. Reason becomes a powder of vowels and consonants. His words hold together without
any sonority. Andre doesn't practice a "dialectical rnaterialism," but rather a
"metaphorical materiahsrn." The apparent sameness and toneless ordering of
Andre's poems conceals a radical disorientation of grammar. Paradoxically his
"words" are charged with all the complication of m ..ymoron and hyperbole.
Each poem is a "grave," so to speak, for his metaphors. Semantics are driven out
ofhis language in order to avoid meaning.
Robert Morris enjoys putting sham "mistakes" into his language systerns.
His dun<my File for example contains a special category called "mistakes." At
times, the artist admits it is difficult to tell a real mistake from a false mistake.
Nevertheless, Morris likes to track down the "irrelevant" and then forget it as
quickly as possible. Actually, he can hardly remember doing the File. Yet, he
must have derived some kind of pleasure from preserving those tedious moments, those minute events, that others call "living." He works from memory,
which is strange when you consider he has nothing to remember. Unlike the
elephant, the artist is one who always forgets.
Donald Judd at one time wrote a descriptive criticism that described "specific objects." When he wrote about Lee Bontecou, his descriptions became a
language full of holes. "The black hole does not allude to a black hole," says
Judd, "it is one." (Arts, April 196 5 .) In that article Judd brings into focus the
structure of his own notion of "the general and the specific" by defining the
"central hole" and "periphery" of her "conic scheme." Let us equate central
with specific, and general with periphery. Although Judd is "no longer interested
in voids," he does seem interested in blank surfaces, which are in effect the opposite of voids. Judd brings an "abyss" 1 into the very material of the thing he
describes when he says: "The image is an object, a grim, abyssal one." The
paradox between the specific and the general is also abyssal. Judd's syntax is
abyssal-it is a language that ebbs from the mind into an ocean of words. A
brooding depth of gleaming surfaces-placid but dismal.
Sol Le Witt is very much aware of the traps and pitfalls oflanguage, and as a
result is also concerned with ennervating "concepts" of paradox. Everything
LeWitt thinks, writes, or has made is inconsistent and contradictory. The
"original idea" of his art is "lost in a mess of drawings, figurings, and other
ideas." Nothing is where it seems to be. His concepts are prisons devoid of reason. The information on his announcement for his show (Dwan Gallery, Los
Angeles, April 1967) is an indication of a self-destroying logic. He submerges
the "grid plan" of his show under a deluge of simulated handwritten data. The
grid fades under the oppressive weight of "sepia" handwriting. It's like getting
words caught in your eyes.
Ad Reinhardt's Chronology (Ad Reinhardt-Paintings by Lucy R. Lippard) is
somber substitute for a loss of confidence in wisdom-it is a register oflaugh80

ter without motive, as well as being a history of non-sense. Behind the "facts"
of his life run the ludicrous events of hazard and destruction. A series of fixed
incidents in the dumps of time." 1936 Civil War in Spain."" 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco."" 1964 China explodes atomic bomb." Along with the inchoate, calamitous
remains of those dead headlines, runs a dry humor that breaks into hilarious
personal memories. Everything in this Chronology is transparent and intangible,
and moves from semblance to semblance, in order to disclose the final nullity.
"1966 One hundred twenty paintings at Jewish Musemn." Reinhardt's Chro/1-

o/ogy follows a chain of non-happenings-its order appears to be born of a

doleful tedium that originates in the unfathomable ground of farce. This dualistic history records itself on the tautologies of the private and the public. Here
is a negative knowledge that enshrouds itself in the remote regions of that intricate language-the joke.
Peter Hutchinson, author of "Is There Life on Earth?" (Art in Alllerica, Fall
1966), uses the discards oflast year's future in order to define to day's present.
His method is highly artificial and is composed of paralyzed quotes, listless
theories, and bland irony. His abandoned planets maintain unthinkable "cultures," and have tasteless "tastes." In "Mannerism in the Abstract" (Art and Artists,
September 1966) Hutchinson lets us know about "probabilities, contingencies,
chances, and cosmic breakdown." "ScientisrTt" is shown to be actually a kind of
Mannerist science full of obvious disguises and false bottoms. "Topology surely
mocks plane geometry," says Hutchinson. But actually his language usage deliberately mocks his own meaning, so that nothing is left but a gratuitous syntactical de11ice. His writing is marvelously "inauthentic." The complexity and
richness of Hutchinson's method starts with science fiction cliches, and sci en tistic conservations and ends in an extraordinary esthetic structure. To paraphrase
Nathalie Sarraute on Flaubert, "Here Hutchinson's defects become virtues."
The attraction of the world outside awakens so energetically in
me the expansive force that I dilate without limit ... absorbed,
lost in multiple curiosity, in the infinity of erudition and the
inexhaustible detail of a peripheral world.
Henri-Frederic Amiel,
}oltrllilf, 1854
Dan Graham is also very much aware of the fringes of communication. And
it is not surprising that one of hisJavorite authors is Robert Pinget. Graham
responds to language as though he lived in it. He has a way of isolating segments of unreliable information into compact masses of fugitive meaning.
One such mass of meanings he has disinterred from the tombic art of Carl
Andre. Some segments from Carl Andre (unpublished list) are as follows:
"frothing at the mouth and frorn watertaps"; "rnisconceptions and canned
laughter"; "difficulty in grasping." This is the kind of depraved rnetaphor that
Andre tries to bury in his "blocks of words." Graham discloses the rnetaphors
that everyone wants to escape.

81

Row housing project, Bayonne, New Jersey. Photo by Dan Graham.

Like some of the other artists Graham can "read" the language of buildings.
("Homes for America," Arts, December-January I967.) The "block houses" of
the post-war suburbs comnlt.micate their" 'dead' land areas" or "sites" in the
manner of a linguistic permutation. Andre Martinet writes, "Buildings are intended to serve as a protection ..."-the same is true of artists' writings. Each
syntax is a "lightly constructed 'shell'" or set oflinguistic surfaces that surround
the artist's unknown motives. The reading of both buildings and gr;n=nrs enables the artist to avoid out of date appeals to "function" or "utilitarianism."
Andy Warhol allows himself to be "interrogated"; he seems too tired to actually grip a pencil, or punch a typewriter. He allows himself to be beaten with
"questions" by his poet-friend Gerard Malanga. Words for Warhol become
something like surrogate torture devices. His language syntax is infused with a
fake sadomasochism. In an interview he is lashed by Malanga's questions (Arts,
Vol. 4I, No.4, I967):
Q: Are all the people degenerates in the movie?

A: Not all the people-99.9% of them..

Serge Garvronsky writing in Cahiers du Cinema, No. ro, points out that
Warhol employs a kind of self-inventing dialogue in his films, that resembles the
sub-dialogue of Nathalie Sarraute. Garvronsky points out the "dis-synchronized
talk," "monosyllabic English," and other "tropistic" effects. The language has
no force, it's not very convincing-all the pornographic preoccupations collapse into verbal deposits, or what is called in communication theory "degenerative information." Warhol's syntax forces an artifice of sadomasochism that
mimics its supposed "reality." Even his surfaces destroy themselves. In Conuer-

sation and Sub-conuersation 1956 by Nathalie Sarraute we find out something

about "pointless remarks," and dialogue masses, that shape our experience "the
slightest intonations and inflections of voice," that become maps of meaning or
antimeaning. Said Bosley Crowther (New York Til/les,July I I, I967) in a review

82

of A1y

"I would say that 'The Endless Conversations' would be a better

title for this fetid beach-boy film."

Edward Ruscha (alias Eddie Russia) collaborated with Mason Williams and
Patrick Blackwell on a book, Royal Road Test, that appears to be about the sad
fate of a Royal (Model "X") typewriter. Here is no Warholian sloth, but rather
a kind of dispassionate fury. The book begins on a note of counterfeit Russian
nihilism, "It was too directly bound to its own anguish to be anything other
than a cry of negation; carrying within itself the seeds of its own destruction."
A record of the deed is as follows:
Date:
Time:
Place:

Sunday,August 21, 1966

s:o7 p.m.
U.S. Highway 91 (interstate Highway 15), traveling
south-southwest approxin1ately 122 miles southwest
of Las Vegas, Nevada

Weather:

Perfect

Speed:

90 m.p.h.

The typewriter was thrown fiom a 1963 Buick window by "thrower"

Mason Williams. The "strewn wreckage" was labeled and photographed for
the book.
INVERSE MEANINGS-THE PARADOXES Of CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING

Modern art, like modern science, can establish complementary

relations with discredited fictional systems; as Newtonian
mechanics is to quantum mechanics, so King Lear is to Endgallle.
Frank Kermode,

Tl1e Seme of Endin,r,;

How em anyone believe that a given vvork is an object independent of the psyche and personal history of the critic studying it,
with regards to which he enjoys a sort of extraterritorial status?
Roland Barthes,

Criticis/11 as Language
Materialism. Utter the word with horror, stressing each syllable.
Gustave Flaubert,

The Dictionary o.fAccepted Ideas

When the word "fiction" is used, most of us think of literature, and practically never of fictions in a general sense. The rational notion of "realism," it
seems, has prevented esthetics from coming to terms with the place of fiction in
all the arts. Realism does not draw from the direct evidence of the mind, but
rather refers back to "naturalistic expressiveness" or "slices oflife." This happens
when art competes with life, and esthetics is replaced by rational imperatives.

83

The fictional betrays its privileged position when it abdicates to a mindless "realism." The status of fiction has vanished into the myth of the fact. It is thought
that facts have a greater reality than fiction-that "science fiction" through the
myth of progress becomes "science fact." Fiction is not believed to be a part of
the world. Rationalism confines fiction to literary categories in order to protect its own interests or systems of knowledge. The rationalist, in order to
nuintain his realistic systems, only ascribes "primary qualities" to the world.
The "materialist" Carl Andre calls his work "a flight from the n<ind." Andre
says that his "poems" and "sculpture" have no n1ental or secondary qualities,
they are to him solidly "material."Yet, paradoxically, Lucy Lippard writing in
the The New York Tillles, June 4, 1967, suggests that Andre's sculpture in a show
at the Bykert Gallery is "rebelliously romantic" because of "nuance" and "surface effects." One person's "materialisn1" becmnes another person's "romanticism." I would venture to assert at this point, that both Miss Lippard's "romanticism" and Andre's "materialism" are the san1e thing. Both views refer to
private states of consciousness that are interchangeable.
Romanticism is an older philosophical f1ction than materialism. Its artifices
are to a greater degree more decadent than the inventions of materialism, yet
at the same time it is more familiar and not as threatening to the myths of fact
as materialisn<. For some people the mere mention of the word "materialisn<"
evokes hordes of demonic forces. Romanticism and materialism if viewed
with two-dimensional clarity have a transparence and directness about them
that is highly fictive. Peter Brook recognized this esthetic in Robbe-Grillet.
Says Brook, "If Robbe-Grillet has sought to destroy the 'romantic heart of
things,' there is a sense in which he is constantly fascinated by the romanticism
of surfaces, a preoccupation especially noticeable in the films j\1arienbad and
L' lmlllortelle, and quite explicit in his new novel, La i\1aison de rendez/J0/15." (Partisan Ret;iew, Winter 1967.) The same is true of" materialism" when it becomes
the esthetic motive of the artist. The reality of materialism is no more real than
that of romanticism. In a sense, it becomes evident that to day's materialism and
rmnanticisn1 share sin1ilar "surfaces." The ronunticisn1 of the 6os is a concern
for the surfaces of materialism, and both are fictions in the chance minds of
the people who perceive them. If scientism isn't being used or misused, then
what I will call "philosophism" is. Philosophism confuses realism with esthetics, and defines art apart from any understanding of the artificies of the mind
and things.
Much modern art is trapped in temporality, because it is unconscious of
ti111e as a "mental structure" or abstract support. The temporality of time began
to be imposed on art in the r8th and 19th centuries with the rise of realism in
painting and novel writing. Novels cease being fictions, criticism condemns
"hmnoral" categories, and "nature" acts as the prevailing panacea. The time
consciousness of that period gave rise to thinking in terms of Renaissance history. Says Everett Ellin in a fascinating article "Museums as Media" (ICA Bul-

84

Giant post card by Dexter Press, Inc., West Nyack, N.Y., depicting the Brontosaurus
(from a painting by Charles R. Knight). (Note impressionistic treatment of water.)
The American Museum of Natural History, New York.

letin, May 1967), "The r:nuseum, a creation of the 19th century, quite naturally
adopted the popular mode of the Renaissance for its content." Tirne had yet to
extend into the distant future (post-history) or into the distant past (pre-history)-nobody much thought about "flying saucers" or an Age of Dinosaurs.
Both pre- and post-history are part of the
tirne consciousness, and they
exist without any reference to Renaissance history. I had a slight awareness of
the sarneness of pre- and post-history, when I wrote in "Entropy and the New
i'Aonuments" (Artj(mttll, June 1966), "This sense of extrerne past and future has
its partial origin in the Museum of Natural History; there the 'cave man' and
the 'space m.an' may be seen under one roof." It didn't occur to me then, that
the "meanings" in the Museum of Natural History avoided any reference to
the Renaissance, yet it does show "art" frorn the Aztec and American Indian
periods-are those periods any more or less "natural" than the Renaissance?
think not-because there is nothing "natural" about the Muse urn of Natural
History. "Nature" is simply another r8th- and 19th-century frction. Says E. E.
Cum.mings, "Natural history 111.useums are made by fools unlike me. But only
God can stuff a tree ...." ("Letter to Ezra Pound," Paris Re11iew, Fall 1966.) The
"past-nature" of the Renaissance fmds its "future-nature" in Modernisn1.both are founded on realism.
RESTORATIONS Of PREHISTORY

The prehistory one finds in the Museum of Natural History is fugitive and
uncertain. It is reconstructed from "Epochs" and "Periods" that no nun has
ever witnessed and based on the rernains of"animated beings" from the Trilobites to Triceratops. We vaguely know about them through Walt Disney and
Sinclair Oil-they are the dinosaurs. One of the best "recreators" of this "dinosaurism" is Charles R. Knight. In many ways he excells the Pop artists, but

fl5

he comes closest to Claes Oldenburg, at least in terms of scale. Sinclair Oil

ought to commission Oldenburg to make "the mating habits of the Brontosaurus" for children's sex education. Knight's art is never seen in museun1s outside of the M.N.H., because it doesn't fit in with the contrived "art-histories"
of Modernism or the Renaissance.
Knight is also an artist who writes. In Life Through the Ages, a book of 28
prehistoric "time" restorations, Knight can be seen as a combination Edouard
Manet and Eric Temple Bell (the professor of Mathematics who wrote science
fiction for Wonder Stories Magazine). Bell in The Greatest Adl!enture describes
"brutes" that are "like no prehistoric
known to science." These monsters are "piled five and six deep" on a frozen beach in Antarctica. "They are
like bad copies, botched imitations if you like of those huge brutes whose
bones we chisel out of the rocks from Wyoming to Patagonia. Nature must
have been drunk, drugged or asleep when she allowed these aborted beasts to
mature. Every last one of them is a freak." It is hard to say Knight's monsters
are "bad copies," yet there is something odd and displaced about both his writings and art. He refers to his writings as "captions," and to his art as "the more
striking forms of Prehistoric times." The following quote is from Knight's
"The Carboniferous or Coal Period"-"Great sprawling salamander-like creatures such as Eryops are typical of the period. No doubt these and many other
species still passed their earlier life stages in the water. They were stupid,
smooth-skinned monsters some six feet long, with wide tooth-filled jaws and
an enormous gape which enabled them to swallow their food at a single gulp."
He also has a way of evoking the prehistoric landscape-"Rancho La BreaCalifornia Pitch Pools": "Peaceful as the place looks now, tragedy, both dark
and terrible, long hung about its gloomy depths." The corollary of Knight's artifice is immobilization. This heavy prehistoric time extends to the landscape:
"slime-covered morasses" and "It was an era of swamps." Death is suggested in
the ever present petrifaction of forests and creatures; a predilection for the oppressive and grim nurks everything he writes and draws. One senses an enormous amorphous struggle between the stable and the unstable; a fusion of action and inertia symbolizing a kind of cartoon vision of the cosmos. Violence
and destruction are intimately associated with this type of carnivorous evolutionism. Nothing seems to escape annihilation-for the Brontosaurus, "starvation is their greatest bugaboo." A kind of goofiness haunts these "big bulked
and small-brained" saurians. Tyrannosaurus Rex is considered by Knight to be
"just an enormous eating machine." These "sinister beings" seem like reformulated symbols of total or original Evil. The battle between the Tyrannosaurus
and Stegosaurus in Walt Disney's Fantasia set to the music of The Rite of Spring
evoked a two-dimensional spectacular death-struggle, quite in keeping with
the entire cast of preposterous reptilian "rnachines." No doubt, Disney at some
point copied his dinosaurs from Knight, just as Sinclair Oil must have copied
directly from Disney for their "Dino-the-Dinosaur."
06

TERATOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

The Art World was created in 4 Days in 4 Sections, 40 years ago,

and originally 4004 B.C. Today n<inor artists have 400 Disciples
and more favored mediocre Artists have 44,000 Devotees
approximately.
Ad Reinhardt,

A Portend of the Artist as a Yliung lvfandala

The immensity of geologic time is so great that it is difficult for
human minds to grasp readily the reality of its extent. It is almost
as if one were to try to understand infinity.
Edwin H. Colbert,

The Dinosaur Book

The word "teratology" or "teratoid" when not being used by biology and
medicine in an "organic" way has a meaning that has to do with marvels, portends, monsters, mutations and prodigious things (Greek: teras, teratos = a
wonder). The word teratoid like the word dinosaur suggests extraordinary
scale, immense regions, and infinite quantity. If we accept Ad Reinhardt's "portend," the Art World is both a monster and a marvel, and if we extend the
meaning of the word: a dinosaur (terrible lizard)-a lizard with its tail in its
//Iouth. Perhaps, that is not "abstract" enough for some of the "devotees." Perhaps they would prefer the "circular earth mound" by Robert Morris or even
"a target" by Kenneth Noland. Organic word meanings, when applied to abstract or mental structures have a way of returning art to the biological condition of naturalism and realism. Science has claimed the word teratology and
related it to disease. The "marvelous" meaning of that word has to be brought
to consciousness again.
Let us now examine Reinhardt's "Portend," and take this "Joke" seriously.
In a sense Reinhardt's teratological Portend seems to approach some kind of
pure classicism, except that where the classicist sees the necessary and true
concept of pure cosmic order, Reinhardt sees it as a grotesque decoy. Near a
label NATURALIST-EXPRESSIONIST-CLASSICISM we see "an angel"
and "a devil"-and a prehistoric Pterodactyl; Knight calls it "another kind of
flying mechanism." Reinhardt treats the Pterodactyl as an atemporal creature
belonging to the same order as devils and angels. The concrete reptile-bird of
the Jurassic Period is displaced from its place in the "Synoptic Table of the
Amphibia and Reptilia" of the "subclass Diapsida," and transformed by Reinhardt into a demon or possibly an Aeon. The rim of Reinhardt's Portend becomes an ill-defined set of schemes, entities half abstract, half concrete, half
impersonal fragments of time or de-spatialized oddities and monsters, a Renaissance dinosaurism hypostatized by a fictional ring of time-something halfway between the real and the symbolic. This part of the Portend is dominated
by a humorous nostalgia for a past that never existed-past history becomes a
comic hell. Atemporal monsters or teratoids are mixed in a precise, yet totally
87

inorganic way. Reinhardt isn't doing what so many "natural expressive" artists
do-he doesn't pretend to be honest. History breaks down into fabulous lies,
that reveal nothing but copies of copies. There is no order outside of the mandala itself.
THE CENTER AND THE CIRCUMfERENCE

The center of Reinhardt's Joke is empty of monsters, a circle contains four sets
of three squares that descend toward the lTtiddle vortex. It is an inversion of
Pascal's statement, that "nature is an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere": instead with Reinhardt we get
an Art World that is an infinite sphere, whose circumference is everyvvhere but
whose center is nowhere. The teratological fringe or circumference alludes to
a tumultuous circle of teerning rnemories front the Past-from that historical
past one sees "nothing" at the middle. The finite present of the center annihilates itself in the presence of the infinite fringes. An appalling distance is established between past and present, but the mandala always engulfs the present
order of things-ART AND GOVERNMENT I ART AND EDUCATION/ ART AND NATURE/ ART AND BUSINESS-are lost in a freakish
grandeur that empties one's central gaze. Everything mad and grotesque on
the outer edges encompasses the present "Art World" in an abysmal concatenation of Baals, Banshees, Beezleboobs, Zealots, Wretches, Toadies, all of which
are transformed into horrors of more recent origin. From the central vortex,
that looks like prophetic parody of"op art"-I can't think of anything more
meaningless than that-to the rectangular margin of parodic wisdorn"Everybuddie understands the Songs of Birds and Picasso," one is aware of a
conflict betvveen center and perimeter. The excluded middle of this Joke
plunges the mind into a simulated past and present without a future. The original and historical nightmare bordering the "void" destroys its own sanctuary.
At the bottom of this well we see "nothing." The center is encompassed by "The
Human Vegetable, The Human Machine, The Human Eye, The Human Animal"-a human "prison house of grandeur and glory," not unlike Edgar Allan
Poe's House of Usher, or even more precisely his A Descent into the 111aelstro!ll"Upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in
depth." Poe's "Pit" (center) is defined by the swing of the "Pendulum" from side
to side, thus defining the circumference. Reinhardt's "dark humor" resernbles
Poe's "sheeted memories of the past." Reinhardt maintains the sante haunted
mind that Poe did: "a dim-remembered story of the old time entombed."
THE MOVIES OF ROGER CORMAN AND NEGATIVE ETERNITIES

The films of Roger Corman are structured by an esthetic of atemporality, that

relates to Reinhardt and Poe more than most visual artists working at this
tirne. The granm>ar of Corman's films avoids the "organic substances" and lifeforcing rationalism that fills so many realistic films with naturalistic meanings.
88

AD REINHARDT, A Portend of the Artist as aYhung Mandala, 1955. Collage, 26 x 19".

One of a series of cartoons commissioned from Reinhardt by Art News, this appeared in the May 1956 issue,

His actors always appear vacant and transparent, more like robots than people-they simply rnove through a series of settings and places and define
where they are by the artifice that surrounds them. This artifice is always signaled by a "tomb" or another mise en scene of deathlessness. For instance, the
Great Pyramjd at the beginning of The Secret Invasion, or the Funeral at the
end of The Wild Angels. Duration is drained, and the networks of an infinite
mind take over, turning the "location" of the film into "inm1easurable but still
definite distances" (Poe). Corman brings the infinite into the finite things and
minds that he directs. The suburban sites in The vflild Angels appear with a
"gleaming and ghastly radiance" (Poe) and seem not to exist at all except as
spectral cinematic artifices. The menacing fictions of the terrain engulf the creatures that pass as actors. "Things" in a Corman movie seem to negate the very
condition they are presented in. A parodic pattern is established by the conventionalized structure or plot-line. The actors as "characters" are not developed
but rather buried under countless disguises. This is especially true of The Secret

Irwasion, where nobody seems to be anybody. Corman uses actors as though

they were "angels" or "monsters" in a cosmos of dissimulation, and it is in that
way that they relate to Reinhardt's world or cosmic view. Corman's sense of
dissimulation shows us the peripheral shell of appearances in terms of some invisible set of rules, rather than by any "natural" or "realistic" inner motivation-his actors reflect the empty center.

SPECTRAL SUBURBS

Where have all the people gone today? Well, there's no need for
you to be worried about all those people.You never see those
people anyway.
The Grateful Dead,
Moming Dew (Dobson-Rose)
... dead streets of the inner suburbs, yellow under the sodium
lights.
Michael Frayn,

Against Entropy
In 1954, when they announced the H-Bomb, only the kids were
ready for it.
Kurt von Meier,
quoted in Open City
A dry wind blows hot and cold down from Chimborazo a soiled
post card in the prop blue sky. Crab men peer out of abandoned
quarries and slag heaps ...
William S. Burroughs,

The Soft Machine

90

It seetns that "the war babies," those born after 1937-38 were "Born Dead"to use a motto favored by the Hell's Angels. The philosophism of "reality" ended
sonte time after the bornbs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the
ovens cooled down. Cinematic "appearance" took over completely son1etime
in the late sos. "Nature" falls into an infinite series of movie "stills"-we get
what Marshall McLuhan calls "The Reel World."
Suburbia encompasses the large cities and dislocates the "country." Suburbia literally means a "city below"; it is a circular gulf between city and com1try-a place where buildings seem to sink away from one's vision-buildings
fall back into sprawling babels or limbos. Every site glides away toward absence. An immense negative entity of formlessness displaces the center which
is the city and swamps the country. From the worn down tnountains ofNorth
New Jersey to postcard skylines of Manhattan, the prodigious variety of
"housing projects" radiate into a vaporized world of cubes. The landscape is
effaced into sidereal expanses and contractions. Los Angeles is all suburb, a
pointless phenomenon which seems uninhabitable, and a place swarming with
dematerialized distances. A pale copy of a bad movie. Edward Ruscha records
this pointlessness in his Ellery Building on the Sunset Strip. All the buildings expire along a horizon broken at intervals by vacant lots, luminous avenues, and
modernistic perspectives. The outdoor immateriality of such photographs contrasts with the pale but lurid indoors of Andy Warhol's movies. Dan Graham
gains this "non-presence" and serial sense of distance in his suburban photos of
forbidding sites: Exterior space gives way to the total vacuity of time. Time as a
concrete aspect of mind mixed with things is attenuated into ever greater distances, that leave one fixed in a certain spot. Reality dissolves into leaden and
incessant lattices of solid diminution. An effacement of the country and city
abolishes space, but establishes enormous mental distances. What the artist seeks
is coherence and order-not "truth," correct statements, or proofs. He seeks the
fiction that reality will sooner or later imitate.

MAPSCAI'ES OR CARTOGRAPHIC SITES

In the deserts of the West some mangled Ruins of the Map lasted
on, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in the whole Country
there are no other relics of the Disciplines of Geography.
Suarez Miranda, Viajes de Varones Pntdentes,
Book Four, Chapter XLV, Lerida, r658
... all the maps you have are of no use, all this work of discovery
and surveying; you have to start off at random, like the first men
on earth; you risk dying of hunger a few miles from the richest
stores ...
Michel Butor, Degrees

91

TING
NORTH

LATITUDE

SN
EQUATOR

Map by Lewis Carroll.

From TheatntJ/l Orbis Terrantllt of Orrelius (r570) to the "paint" -clogged maps
of Jasper Johns, the map has exercised a fascination over the minds of artists. A
cartography of uninhabitable places seems to be developing-complete with
decoy diagrams, abstract grid systems made of stone and tape (Carl Andre and
Sol Le Witt), and electronic "mosaic" photomaps from NASA. Gallery floors
are being turned into collections of parallels and meridians. Andre in a show in
the Spring of'67 at Dwan Gallery in California covered an entire floor with a
"map" that people walked on-rectangular sunken "islands" were arranged in
a regular order. Maps are becoming immense, heavy quadrangles, topographic
limits that are emblems of perpetuity, interminable grid coordinates without
Equators and Tropic Zones.
Lewis Carroll refers to this kind of abstract cartography in his The Hunting
of the Snark (where a map contains "nothing") and in Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (where a map contains "everything"). The Bellm.an's map in the Snark
reminds one ofJo Baer's paintings.

92

The World Energy Mop pictured on a Dymaxion

Projection. The man symbols represent the percentage
of world population in each region. The black dots
represent the percentage of"energy slaves" serving the
regions. (First published in Fortune, February 1940.)

He had bought a large nup representing the sea,

Without least vestige ofland:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.
Jo Baer's surfaces are certainly in keeping with the Captain's map which is
not a "void," but "A perfect and absolute blank!" The opposite is the case, with
the map in Carroll's SyhJie. In Chapter I I, a German Professor tells how his
country's cartographers experimented with larger and larger maps until they
finally made one with a scale of a mile to a mile. One could very well see the
Professor's explanation as a parable on the fate of painting since the sos. Perhaps museum.s and galleries should start planning square mile interiors. The
Professor said, "It has never been spread out, yet. The farmers objected: they
said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So now we
use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."
The Bound Sphere Minus Ltme by Ruth Vollmer may be seen as a globe with
93

RUTH VOLLMER, Bound Sphere Minus Lune. Unique bronze cast,

7 1/2'' diameter.

JASPER JOHNS, Map (based on Buckminster Fuller's Dymoxion Airocean

World), 1967. Encaustic and collage/canvas, 186 x 396".

a cut away Northern region. Three arcs in the shape of crescents intersect at
the "bound" equator. The "lune" triangulation in this orb detaches itself and
becomes secondary "sculpture."
There are approximately 50 Panama Canals to a cubic mile and
there are 317 MILLION cubic miles of ocean.
R. Buckminster Fuller,
Nine Chains to the J\l[oon
R. Buckminster Fuller has developed a type of writing and original cartography, that not only is pragmatic and practical but also astonishing and ter<ltological. His Dy111axio11 Projection and [;florid EiiCig)' lviap is a Cos111ogmphia that
proves Ptolemy's remark that, "no one presents it rightly unless he is an artist."
Each dot in the World Ene1gy J\1ap refers to "r% of World's harnessed energy
slave population (inanimate power serving man) in terms of human equivalents," says Fuller. The use Fuller makes of the "dot" is in a sense a concentration or dilation of an infinite expanse of spheres of energy. The "dot" has its
rim. and middle, and could be related to Reinhardt's mandala, Judd's "device"
of the specific and general, or Pascal's universe of center and circumference.
Yet, the dot evades our capacity to find its center. Where is the central point,
axis, pole, dominant interest, fixed position, absolute structure, or decided goaP
The mind is always being hurled towards the outer edge into intractable trajectories that lead to vertigo.
NOTE
I.

94

Recently drama critic Michael Fried has been enveloped by this "literal" abyss. (See
"Objecthood and Art," Arifonlln,June 1967.

A THING IS A HOlE IN

THING IT IS NOT

(I

As consultant in early design of the proposed new air terminal between

Fort Worth and Dallas, Texas, the author takes a new view of borings.
The site is at 550 to 620 foot elevation, well drained, generally open. Undergmund is chiefiy Cr-etaceous Age sediment The undergr-ound site
was penetrated by auger borings and core borings, and samples visually
classifted and tested.-Ed.

Boring, if seen as a discrete step in the development of an entire site, has an esthetic value. It is an invisible hole. It could be defined by Carl Andre's motto" A thing is a hole in a thing it is not."
All language becomes an alphabet of sites. The boring, like other works, is
becoming more and more in1portant to artists. Pavernents, holes, trenches,
mounds, heaps, paths, ditches, roads, terraces, etc., all have an esthetic potential.
Remote places such as the Pine Barrens of New Jersey and the frozen wastes
of the North and South poles could be coordinated by art forms that would
use the actual land as a medium. Television could transmit such activity all over
the world. Instead of using a paintbrush to n1ake his art, Robert Morris would
like to use a bulldozer. Consider a "City of Ice" in the Arctic that would contain frigid labyrinths, glacial pyramids, and towers of snow, all built according
to strict abstract systems. Or an anwrphous "Cit-y of Sand" that would be
nothing but artificial dunes and shallow sand pits.
Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton have developed other sites that have
limits similar to the air terminal project. They include port and harbor facilities
like the Navy pier in Chicago, a port in Anchorage, and San Nicholas Harbor
in Aruba. Such sites rest on wide expanses of water, and are generated by ship
voyages and cargo nwvements. Bulk storage systems are contained by mazes of
transfer pipelines that include hydrant refueling pump houses and gas dispensers. The process behind the making of a storage facility may be viewed in
stages, thus constituting a whole "series" of art from the ground up. Land surveying and preliminary building, if isolated into discrete stages, may be viewed
as an array of art works that LJanislz as they develop.
Water resources that involve flood control, irrigation, and hydro-electric
power provide one with an entirely new way to order the terrain. This is a
kind of radical construction that takes into account large land masses and bodies of water. The making of artificial lakes, with the help of dams, brings into
view a vast "garden." For instance, the Peligre Dam in the Republic of Haiti
consists of 250-foot high concrete buttresses. This massive structure with its artificial cascades and symmetrical layout stands as an immobile facade. It con-

La11dscape Architecture, April 1968

95

veys an inm1ense scale and power. By investigating the physical forms of such
projects we may gain unexpected esthetic information. I am not concerned
here with the original "functions" of such massive projects, but rather with
what they suggest or evoke.
It is important to mentally experience these projects as something distinctive and intelligible. By extracting fi-om a site certain associations that have remained invisible within the old framework of rational language, by dealing directly with the appearance of what Roland Barthes calls "the simulacrum of
the object," the aim is to reconstruct a new type of "building" into a whole
that engenders new meanings. From the linguistic point of view, one establishes rules of structure based on a change in the semantics of building. Tony
Smith seems conscious of this "silllulnmtlll" when he speaks of an "abandoned
airstrip" as an "artificial landscape." He speaks of an absence of"function" and
"tradition."
What is needed is an esthetic method that brings together anthropology
and linguistics in terms of"building." This would put an end to "art history" as
sole criterion. Art at the present is confined by a dated notion, namely "art as a
criticisn1 of earlier art."
"Site Selection Study" in terms of art is just beginning. The investigation of
a specific site is a matter of extracting concepts out of existing sense-data
through direct perceptions. Perception is prior to conception, when it comes
to site selection or definition. One does not i111pose, but rather exposes the
site-be it interior or exterior. Interiors may be treated as exteriors or vlCe
versa. The unknown areas of sites can best be explored by artists.

96

ROBERT SMITHSON, Leaning Strata, 1968. Flat white paint on steel, 49 1/2 x I 03 x 30".

NT

( 96

The notion of an establishment seems to be a social fairytale, a deadly utopia

or invisible system that inspires an almost mythical sense of dread-it is a "bad
dream" that has somehow consurned the world. I shall postulate The Establishment as a state of mind-a deranged mind, that appears to be a mental
of
Death. The architecture is uncertain and without a center; it comes and goes
like a will-o '-the-wisp. It contains a strange mixture of politics and r:nadness
that resembles a nightmare let loose in the time and space of everyday reality.
This nightmarish system catalogues every known physical thing according to
the "science" of totalitarian propaganda, and none of this "thought-control"
can be traced by the isolated individual. Indoctrination causes rmny to follow
monstrous lies against their will. Public or State "programs" follow maze-like
patterns, till fmally no one knows where he is. In this political dreun world
everything is leveled so that on the distant horizons mirages appear-phantom
images of crazed armies and sinking ships, shadowy scenes of "the death of
art," and other obscene pomposities. Networks of paths go in all directions.
Everything that is the antithesis of art rolls on after brainless slogans: "Everyman is equal-the war on poverty-win the mind of man to freedorn"-all
echo into the poisonous skies. Organizations seem to grow more and more
crackpot with all their "activist" demonstrations. Techniques of "social" duplication make it irnpossible to get near anything that even slightly resembles "a
1\!Ietro,June 1968

91

government"-it is the decomposition of decmnposition. All individual power

is undermined and wasted as vague institutions of "culture," "education," and
"sport" spread into departtnents of delusion. Administrations proliferate into
bogus "movements" and "fake ideals." Impenetrable piles of bureaucratic slush
sink into an ever sinking landscape of organized violence. The circles of power
become more and more intangible as they move to the edge of nowhere.
Crimes are committed for the ultimate good of the State. Fictitious social
structures uphold stupid hierarchies and protect the legal crin1inals. Unreality
becomes a "hard-nosed" fact. In this fugitive "city" of the crumbling worldlTtind, all solids tremble and seem about to disintegrate. A complete inarticulation of thought brings one to a sicldy lagoon, called "The Slough of Decayed
Language"-it has vile shapeless creatures swimming in it. Beyond the lagoon
are the desolate gates of "The Museun< of Leftover Ideologies," which is run
by the robots of The Establishment.
In the museum one can find deposits of rust labeled "Philosophy," and in
glass cases unknown lumps of something labeled "Aesthetics." One can walk
down ruined hallways and see the remains of "Glory." A sense of fatigue overcomes one in the "Room of Ancient History." A chart with poorly drawn pictures shows the
Wonders of the World" with the captions: The Egyptian
Pyramids, The Walls and Hanging Gardens of Babylon, The Mausoleum at
Halicarnassus, The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, The Colossus of Rhodes,
The Statue of Zeus by Phidias at Olympia, and the Pharos (or lighthouse) at
Alexandria. Adjoining this room is the "Room of Savage Splendor" where we
see a group of simulated "primitives" made of plaster sitting around a campfire
with cellophane flames beating the air ferociously. A faded map shows the
"underdeveloped" countries. Fifty glass cases all the same size contain nothing
but arrowheads.
In the "Hall of Destruction," we see a fantastic plan to blow up the Statue
of Liberty. Some bones from Hannibal's elephants are neatly displayed, and so

ROBERT SMITHSON, Glass Stratum, 1967. Glass. 17 3/< x 12 x 84".

98

is Nero's "fiddle." Piles of trophies are strewn in odd corners. A tasteful painting of "The Battle of Waterloo" hangs on a wall. A photograph shows a World
War I tank bogged down in the mud. On a cracking wall is a list of "ideals"
that killed millions.
The "Room of Great Artists" presents a panorama that goes from "the
grand" to "the horrible." A continuous film, always being shown in a dark
chamber, depicts "the artist alienated from society." It is made in "serial" sections under the titles: "Suffering, discovery, fame, and decline." The film delves
into the private life of the creative genius and shows the artist's conflicts as he
struggles to make the world understand his vision.
In this museum run by the awesome Establishment is also the "Hall of Lost
Establishments and Vanished Civilizations." We see Troy-the golden treasures
of a great mythical city discovered hidden beneath a hilly Turkish town; Babylon-the great tower of Babel rising over the desert like a modern skyscraper;
Angkor-its vine-enshrouded towers brooding over the steaming jungles of
Cambodia; and Pompeii-proud city of the Caesars preserved in its last agonized moment of life by a sudden torrent of volcanic ash-and many more.
This hall sags under the weight of such exhibitions. The Establishment is a
nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

99

MIND:

The earth's surface and the figments of the mind have a way of disintegrating
into discrete regions of art. Various agents, both fictional and real, somehow
trade places with each other-one cannot avoid muddy thinking when it
comes to earth projects, or what I will call "abstract geology." One's mind and
the earth are in a constant state of erosion, mental rivers wear away abstract
banks, brain waves undermine
of thought, ideas decompose into stones of
unknowing, and conceptual crystallizations break apart into deposits of gritty
reason. Vast moving faculties occur in this geological miasma, and they move
in the most physical way. This movement seerns motionless, yet it crushes the
landscape of logic under glacial reveries. This slow flowage makes one conscious of the turbidity of thinking. Slump, debris slides, avalanches all take
place within the cracking linilts of the brain. The entire body is pulled into the
cerebral sedirnent, where particles and
n1ake themselves known as
solid consciousness. A bleached and fractured world surrounds the artist. To
organize this rness of corrosion into patterns, grids, and subdivisions is an esthetic process that has scarcely been touched.
The manifestations of technology are at times less "extensions" of man
Artfomllt, September 1968

The Bangor Quarry. Slate site in an uncontained condition before being

contained in a Non Site by Robert Smithson. (Photo:Virginia Dwan.)

100

ROBERT SMITHSON. Non-Site, 1968. (Slate (rom Bangor, Po.)

(Marshall McLuhan's anthropomorphism), than they are aggregates of elements. Even the most advanced tools and m.achines are made of the raw matter
of the earth. To day's highly refined technological tools are not much different
in this respect from those of the caveman. Most of the better artists prefer
processes that have not been idealized, or differentiated into "objective" meanings. Common shovels, awkward looking excavating devices, what Michael
Heizer calls "dumb tools," picks, pitchforks, the machine used by suburban
contractors, grim tractors that have the clumsiness of arn1ored dinosaurs, and
plows that simply push dirt around. Machines like Benjarnin Holt's steam tractor (invented in r88s)-"It crawls over mud like a caterpillar." Digging engines and other crawlers that can travel over rough terrain and steep grades.
Drills and explosives that can produce shafts and earthquakes. Geometrical
trenches could be dug with the help of the "ripper"-steel toothed rakes
mounted on tractors. With such equiprnent construction takes on the look of
destruction; perhaps that's why certain architects hate bulldozers and steam
shovels. 'fhey seem. to turn the terrain into unfmished cities of organized
wreckage. A sense of chaotic planning engulfs site after site. Subdivisions are
made-but to what purpose? Building takes on a singular wildness as loaders
scoop and drag soil all over the place. Excavations form shapeless mounds of
debris, miniature landslides of dust, mud, sand and gravel. Dump trucks spill
soil into an infinity ofheaps.The dipper of the giant mining power shovel is 25
feet high and digs I40 cu. yds. (250 tons) in one bite. These processes of heavy
construction have a devastating kind of primordial grandeur, and are in many

ROBERT SMITHSON. NonSite. 1968. (Mica (rom Portland,

Conn.)

Buckwheat Mineral Dump, Rock site in an uncomained condition before

being contained in Non-Site #3 by 1\obert Smithson. (Photo: Nancy Holt.)

101

ways more astonishing than the fmished project-be it a road or a building.

The actual disruption of the earth's crust is at tirnes very compelling, and seems
to confirm Heraclitus's Fragment 124, "The most beautiful world is like a heap
of rubble tossed down in confusion." The tools of art have too long been confmed to "the studio."The city gives the illusion that earth does not exist.
Heizer calls his earth projects "The alternative to the absolute city system."
Recently, in Vancouver, lain Baxter put on an exhibition of Piles that were
located at different points in the city; he also helped in the presentation of a

Porifolio of Piles. !Jumping and pouring become interesting techniques. Carl

Andre's "graLJe site"-a tiny pile of sand, was displayed under a stairway at the
Museurn of Contemporary Crafts last year. Andre, unlike Baxter, is more concerned with the elemental in things. Andre's pile has no anthropomorphic overtones; he gives it a clarity that avoids the idea of temporal space. A serenification takes place. Dennis Oppenheim has also considered the "pile"-"the basic
components of concrete and gypsum ... devoid of manual organization."
Some of Oppenheiiil's proposals suggest desert physiography-mesas, buttes,
rnushroom mounds, and other "deflations" (the removal of material from
beach and other land surfaces by wind action). My own Tar Pool and GraLJel Pit
( r966) proposal makes one conscious of the primal ooze. A n10lten substance
is poured into a square sink that is surrounded by another square sink of coarse
gravel. The tar cools and flattens into a sticky level deposit. This carbonaceous
sedin1ent brings to mind a tertiary world of petroleum, asphalts, ozokerite, and
bituminous agglomerations.
PRIMARY ENVELOPMENT

At the low levels of consciousness the artist experiences undifferentiated or

unbounded methods of procedure that break with the focused limits of rational technique. Here tools are undifferentiated from the material they operate
on, or they seem to sink back into their primordial condition. Robert Morris
(Ariforulll,April I968) sees the paint brush vanish into Pollock's "stick," and the
stick dissolve into "poured paint" fron1 a container used by Morris Louis.
What then is one to do with the container? This entropy of technique leaves
one with an en1pty limit, or no limit at all. All differentiated technology becomes meaningless to the artist who knows this state. "What the Nominalists
call the grit in the machine," says T. E. Hulme in Cinders, "I call the fundamental element of the machine." The rational critic of art cannot risk this abandonment into "oceanic" undifferentiation, he can only deal with the limits
that come after this plunge into such a world of non-containment.
At this point I must return to what I think is an important issue, namely
Tony Smith's "car ride" on the "unfmished turnpike." "This drive was a revealing experience. The road and much of the landscape was artificial, and yet it
couldn't be called a work of art." ("Talking with Tony Smith" by Samuel

102

MICHAEL HEIZER, Compression Line, 1968. Unpainted plywood,

16' long, 6" surface opening, 24" depth, 24" base (underground).
El Mirage Dry Lake, Mohave Desert, California.

MICHAEL HEIZER, Two-Stage Liner Buried in Earth and Snow, 1967.

Sierra Mountains, near Reno,

Wagstaff, Jr., Arifont111, Decen'lber 1966.) He is talking about a sensation, not

the finished work of art; this doesn't imply that he is anti-art. Smith is describing the state of his mind in the "primary process" of making contact with matter. This process is called by Anton Ehrenzweig "dedifferentiation," and it involves a suspended question regarding "limitlessness" (Freud's notion of the
"oceanic") that goes back to Cil;iffzation and Its Disconte11ts. Michael Fried's
shock at Smith's experiences shows that the critic's sense of limit cannot risk
the rhythrn of dedifferentiation that swings between "oceanic" fragmentation
and strong determinants. Ehrenzweig says that in modern art this rhythm is
"somewhat onesided"-toward the oceanic. Allan Kaprow's thinking is a good
example-"Most humans, it seems, still put up fences around their acts and
thoughts." (Arifo/'11111, June 1968 .) Fried thinks he knows who has the "finest"
fences around their art. Fried claims he rejects the "infinite," but this is Fried
writing in Artfonttll, February 1967 on Morris Louis: "The dazzling blankness
of the untouched canvas at once repulses and engulfs the eye, like an infinite
abyss, the abyss that opens up behind the least mark that we make on a flat surface, or would open up if innumerable conventions both of art and practical life
did not restrict the consequences of our act within narrow bounds." The "innmnerable conventions" do not exist for certain artists who do exist within a
physical "abyss." Most critics cannot endure the suspension of boundaries between what Ehrenzweig calls the "self and the non-self" They are apt to dismiss Malevich's Non-ObjectitJe World as poetic debris, or only refer to the

103

"abyss" as a rational metaphor "within narrow bounds."The artist who is physically engulfed tries to give evidence of this experience through a limited
(mapped) revision of the original unbounded state. I agree with Fried that
limits are not part of the primary process that Tony SrT:tith was talking about.
There is different experience before the physical abyss than before the mapped
revision. Nevertheless, the quality of Fried's fear (dread) is high, but his experience of the abyss is low-a weak metaphor-"like an infinite abyss."
The bins or containers ofrny Non-Sites gather in the fragments that are experienced in the physical abyss of raw matter. The tools of technology become a
part of the Earth's geology as they sink back into their original state. Machines
like dinosaurs must return to dust or rust. One might say a "de-architecturing"
takes place before the artist sets his limits outside the studio or the room.
BETTER HOMES AND INDUSTRIES

Great sprays of greenery make the Lambert live-in room an

oasis atop a cliff dwelling. In a corner, lighted by skylights and
spotlights, "Hard Red," an oil by Jack Bush. All planting by
Lan:tbert Landscape Company.
Caption under a photograph,
House and Garden,July 1968
In Art in A111erica, Sept.-Oct. 1966, there is a Portrait of Antlwny Caro, with
photographs of his sculpture in settings and landscapes that suggest English
gardening. One work, Pri111a Luce 1966, painted yellow, rnatches the yellow daf-
fodils peeking out behind it, and it sits on a well cut lawn. I know, the sculptor
prefers to see his art indoors, but the fact that this work ended up where it did
is no excuse for thoughtlessness about installation. The more compelling artists
today are concerned with "place" or "site"-Smith, de Maria, Andre, Heizer,
Oppenheirn, Huebler-to name a few. Somehow, Caro's work picks up its surroundings, and gives one a sense of a contrived, but Lnned, "wildness" that
echoes to the tradition ofEnglish gardening.
Around 1720 the English invented the antiformal garden as protest against
the French formal garden. The French use of geometric forms was rejected as
something "unnatural." This seems to relate to today's debate between socalled "formalism" and "anti-formalism." The traces of weak naturalism cling
to the background of Caro's Pri111a Luce. A leftover Arcadia with flowery overtones gives the sculpture the look of some industrial ruin. The brightly painted
surfaces cheerfully seem to avoid any suggestion of the "romantic ruin," but
they are on closer investigation related to just that. Caro 's industrial ruins, or
concatenations of steel and
be viewed as Kantian "things-inthemselves," or be placed into some syntax based on So and So's theories, but at
this point I will leave those notions to the keepers of "modernity." The English consciousness of art has always been best displayed in its "landscape gardens." "Sculpture" was used more to generate a set of conditions.
104

ROBERT SMITHSON, for A Non-Site below, 1968.

Aerial photograph/map,

ROBERT SMITHSON, A Non-Site (indoor earthwork), 1968.

Blue painted aluminum with sand, 12 x 65 112 x 65 112 ".

Clement Greenberg's notion of "the landscape" reveals itself with shades of

T. S. Eliot in an article, "Poetry of Vision" (Arifcmtllt,April 1968). Here "Anglicizing tastes" are evoked in his descriptions of the Irish landscape. "The ruined
castles and abbeys," says Greenberg, "that strew the beautiful countryside are
gray and dim," shows he takes "pleasure in ruins." At any rate, the "pastoral," it
seems, is outmoded. The gardens of history are being replaced by sites of time.
Memory traces of tranquil gardens as "ideal nature"-jejune Edens that
suggest an idea of banal "quality"-persist in popular magazines like House
Beautiflt! and Better Ho111es and Gardens. A kind of watered down Victorianism,
an elegant notion of industrialism in the woods; all this brings to mind some
kind of vvasted charm. The decadence of "interior decoration" is full of appeals
to "country manners" and liberal-democratic notions of gentry. Many art
magazines have gorgeous photographs of artificial industrial ruins (sculpture)
on their pages. The "gloomy" ruins of aristocracy are transformed into the
"happy" ruins of the humanist. Could one say that art degenerates as it approaches gardening? 1 These "garden-traces" seem part of time and not history,
they seem to be involved in the dissolution of "progress." It was John Ruskin
who spoke of the "dreadful Hammers" of the geologists, as they destroyed the
classical order. The landscape reels back into the millions and millions of years
of "geologic time."
FROM STEEL TO RUST

As "technology" and "industry" began to become an ideology in the New

York Art World in the late 'sos and early '6os, the private studio notions of
"craft" collapsed. The products of industry and technology began to have an
appeal to the artist who
to work like a "steel welder" or a "laboratory
technician." This valuation of the material products of heavy industry, first de-

105

veloped by David Smith and later by Anthony Caro, led to a fetish for steel and
alurninum as a medium (painted or unpainted). Molded steel and cast alulTtinum are lTtachine manufactured, and as a result they bear the stamp of technological ideology. Steel is a hard, tough metal, suggesting the perm.anence of
technological values. It is con1.posed of iron alloyed with various small percentages of carbon; steel may be alloyed with other metals, nickel, chromium,
etc., to produce specific properties such as hardness and resistance to rusting.
Yet, the more I think about steel itself, devoid of the technological refinements, the more rust becomes the fundamental property of steel. Rust itself is a
reddish brown or reddish yellow coating that often appears on "steel sculpture," and is caused by oxidation (an interesting non-technological condition),
as during exposure to air or moisture; it consists almost entirely of ferric oxide,
Fe 2 0 3 and ferric hydroxide, Fe(OH) 3 . In the technological mind rust evokes a
fear of disuse, inactivity, entropy, and ruin. Why steel is valued over rust is a
technological value, not an artistic one.
By excluding technological processes from the making of art, we began to
discover other processes of a more fundamental order. The breakup or fiagmentation of matter makes one aware of the sub-strata of the Earth before it is
overly refined by industry into sheet metal, extruded !-beams, aluminum
channels, tubes, wire, pipe, cold-rolled steel, iron bars, etc. I have often thought
about non-resistant processes that would involve the actual sedimentation of
matter or what I called "Pulverizations" back in 1966. Oxidation, hydration,
carbonatization, and solution (the major processes of rock and mineral disintegration) are four methods that could be turned toward the making of art. The
smelting process that goes into the making of steel and other alloys separates
"in1.purities" from an original ore, and extracts n1etal in order to nuke a more
"ideal" product. Burnt-out ore or slag-like rust is as basic and primary as the
material smelted from it. Technological ideology has no sense of time other
than its immediate "supply and demand," and its laboratories function as blinders to the rest of the world. Like the refined "paints" of the studio, the refined
"metals" of the laboratory exist within an "ideal system." Such enclosed
"pure" systems make it impossible to perceive any other kinds of processes
than the ones of differentiated technology.
Refinement of matter from one state to another does not mean that socalled "impurities" of sediment are "bad" -the earth is built on sedimentation
and disruption. A refinement based on all the matter that has been discarded
by the technological ideal seems to be taking place. The coarse swathes of tar
on Tony Smith's plywood mock-ups are no more or less refined than the burnished or painted steel of David Smith. Tony Smith's surfaces display more of a
sense of the "prehistoric world" that is not reduced to ideals and pure gestalts.
' The fact remains that the mind and things of certain artists are not "unities,"
\but things in a state of arrested disruption. One might object to "hollow" vol-

106

umes in favor of "solid materials;' but no materials are solid, they all contain
caverns and fissures. Solids are particles built up around flux, they are objective
illusions supporting grit, a collection of surfaces ready to be cracked. All chaos is
put into the dark inside of the art. By refusing "technological miracles" the artist
begins to know the corroded moments, the carboniferous states of thought, the
shrinkage of mental mud, in the geologic chaos-in the strata of esthetic consciousness. The refuse between mind and matter is a mine of information.
THE DISLOCATION OF CRAFT-AND FALL OF THE STUDIO

Plato's Ti111aeus shows the demiurge or the artist creating a model order, with
his eyes fixed on a non-visual order of Ideas, and seeking to give the purest
representation of them. The "classical" notion of the artist copying a perfect
mental model has been shown to be an error. The modern artist in his "studio," working out an abstract grammar within the limits of his "craft," is
trapped in but another snare. When the fissures between mind and matter multiply into an infinity of gaps, the studio begins to crumble and fall like The
House of Usher, so that mind and matter get endlessly confounded. Deliverance from the confines of the studio frees the artist to a degree fiom the snares
of craft and the bondage of creativity. Such a condition exists without any appeal to "nature." Sadism is the end product of nature, when it is based on the
biomorphic order of rational creation. The artist is fettered by this order, if he
believes himself to be creative, and this allows for his servitude which is designed by the vile laws of Culture. Our culture has lost its sense of death, so it
can kill both mentally and physically, thinking all the time that it is establishing
the most creative order possible.
\ j

THE DYING lANGUAGE

The names of minerals and the minerals themselves do not differ from each
other, because at the bottom of both the material and the print is the beginning of an abysmal number of fissures. Words and rocks contain a language that
follows a syntax of splits and ruptures. Look at any word long enough and you
will see it open up into a series of faults, into a terrain of particles each containing its own void. This discomforting language of fragmentation offers no
easy gestalt solution; the certainties of didactic discourse are hurled into the
erosion of the poetic principle. Poetry being forever lost must submit to its
own vacuity; it is somehow a product of exhaustion rather than creation. Poetry is always a dying language but never a dead language.
Journalism in the guise of art criticism fears the disruption oflanguage, so it
resorts to being "educational" and "historical." Art critics are generally poets
who have betrayed their art, and instead have tried to turn art into a matter of
reasoned discourse, and, occasionally, when their "truth" breaks down, they resort to a poetic quote. Wittgenstein has shown us what can happen when Ian-

107

WALTER DE MARIA, Hal( Mile Long Drawing. April 1968. Chalk,

2 parallel lines, 12 feet apart, Mojave Deserc, California.

ROBERT SMITHSON, Pulverizations, 1966.Photostat.

guage is "idealized," and that it is hopeless to try to fit language into some absolute logic, whereby everything objective can be tested. We have to fabricate
our rules as we go along the avalanches of language and over the terraces of
criticism.
Poe's Narrative ofA. Gordon Pynt seems to me excellent art criticism and
prototype for rigorous "non-site" investigations. "Nothing worth mentioning
occurred during the next twenty-four hours except that, in examining the
ground to the eastward third chasm, we found two triangular holes of great
depth, and also with black granite sides." His descriptions of chasms and holes
seem to verge on proposals for "earthwards." The shapes of the chasms themselves become "verbal roots" that spell out the difference between darkness
and light. Poe ends his mental maze with the sentence-"! have graven it
within the hills and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock."
THE CLIMATE Of SIGHT

The climate of sight changes from wet to dry and from dry to wet according
to one's 1nental weather. The prevailing conditions of one's psyche affect how
he views art. We have already heard nmch about "cool" or "hot" art, but not
much about "wet" and" dry" art. The viewer, be he an artist or a critic, is subject
to a climatology of the brain and eye. The wet mind enjoys "pools and stains"
of paint. "Paint" itself appears to be a kind of liquefaction. Such wet eyes love
100

to look on melting, dissolving, soaking surfaces that give the illusion at titnes
of tending toward a gaseousness, atomization or fogginess. This watery syntax
is at times related to the" canvas support."
The world disintegrates around me.
Yvonne Rainer
By Palm Desert springs often run dry.
Van Dyke Parks,

Song Cycle
The following is a proposal for those who have leaky minds. It could be
thought of as The Mind of Mud, or in later stages, The Mind of Clay.
THE MUD POOL PROJECT

r. Dig up roo ft. sq. area of earth with a pitchfork.

Get local fire department to fill the area with water. A fire hose

2.

may be used for this purpose.

3. The area will be fmished when it turns to mud.

4- Let it dry under the sun until it turns to clay.

5. Repeat process at will.

VV/ien dried under the Sll/1 's rays fin a si!{ficiwtly long ti111e, 11111d and
clay shrinle and cmcle in a network cifjissures which enclose polygonal
areas.
Fredric H. Lahee,

Field Geology
The artist or critic with a dank brain is bound to end up appreciating anything that suggests saturation, a kind of watery effect, an overall seepage, discharges that submerge perceptions in an onrush of dripping observation. They
are grateful for an art that evokes general liquid states, and disdain the desiccation of fluidity. They prize anything that looks drenched, be it canvas or steel.
Depreciation of aridity means that one would prefer to see art in a devvy green
setting, say the hills of Vermont, rather than the Painted Desert.
Aristotle believed that heat combined with dryness resulted in fire: where
else could this feeling take place than in a desert or in Malevich's head? "No
more 'likenesses of reality,' no idealistic images, nothing but a desert!" says
Malevich in The Non-Objective vVorld. Walter DeMaria and Michael Heizer
have actually worked in the Southwestern deserts. Says Heizer, in some scattered
notes, "Earth liners installed in Sierras, and down on desert floor in CarsonReno area."The desert is less "nature" than a concept, a place that swallows up
boundaries. When the artist goes to the desert he enriches his absence and
burns off the water (paint) on his brain. The slush of the city evaporates from
the artist's mind as he installs his art. Heizer's "dry lakes" become mental maps

I 09

that contain the vacancy of Thanatos. A consciousness of the desert operates

between craving and satiety.
Jackson Pollock's art tends toward a torrential sense of 1/lateria/ that n1akes
his paintings look like splashes of marine sediments. Deposits of paint cause
layers and crusts that suggest nothing "formal" but rather a physical metaphor
without realism or naturalism. Full Fatlzolll Five becomes a Sargasso Sea, a
dense lagoon of pigtnent, a logical state of an oceanic mind. Pollock's introduction of pebbles into his private topographies suggests an interest in geological artifices. The rational idea of "painting" begins to disintegrate and decompose into so many sedimentary concepts. Both Yves Klein and Jean Dubuffet
hinted at global or topographic sedimentary notions in their works-both
worked with ashes and cinders. Says Dubuffet, regarding the North and South
Poles, "The revolution of a being on its axis, reminiscent of a dervish, suggests
fatiguing, wasted effort; it is not a pleasant idea to consider and seems instead
the provisional solution, until a better one con1es along, of despair." A sense of
the Earth as a map undergoing disruption leads the artist to the realization that
nothing is certain or formal. Language itself becomes mountains of symbolic
debris. Klein's IKB globes betray a sense of futility-a collapsed logic. G. E. M.
Anscombe writing on "Negation" in An Introduction to vllittgenstein's Tractattts
says, "But it is clear then an all-white or all-black globe is not a map." It is also
clear that Klein's all blue globe is not a map; rather it is an anti-map; a negation
of "creation" and the" creator" that is supposed to be in the artist's "self."
THE WRECK OF FORMER BOUNDARiES

The strata of the Earth is a jumbled museum. Embedded in the sediment is a

text that contains limits and boundaries which evade the rational order, and
social structures which confme art. In order to read the rocks we must become
conscious of geologic time, and of the layers of prehistoric material that is entombed in the Earth's crust. When one scans the ruined sites of pre-history
one sees a heap of wrecked maps that upsets our present art historical limits. A
rubble oflogic confronts the viewer as he looks into the levels of the sedimentations. The abstract grids containing the raw matter are observed as something incomplete, broken and shattered.
In June, 1968, my wife Nancy, Virginia Dwan, Dan Graham, and I visited
the slate quarries in Bangor-Pen Angyl, Pennsylvania. Banks of suspended slate
hung over a greenish-blue pond at the bottom of a deep quarry. All boundaries
and distinctions lost their meaning in this ocean of slate and collapsed all notions of gestalt unity. The present fell forward and backward into a tumult of
"de-differentiation," to use Anton Ehrenzweig's word for entropy. It was as
though one was at the bottom of a petrified sea and gazing on countless
stratographic horizons that had fallen into endless directions of steepness. Syncline (downward) and anticline (upward) outcroppings and the asymmetrical
cave-ins caused minor swoons and vertigos. The brittleness of the site seemed

110

to swarm around one, causing a sense of displacement. I collected a canvas bag

full of slate chips for a small Non-Site.
Yet, if art is art it must have limjts. How can one contain this "oceanic" site?
I have developed the Non-Site, which in a physical way contains the disruption of the site. The container is in a sense a fragment itself, something that
could be called a three-dimensional1nap.Without appeal to "gestalts" or "antiform," it actually exists as a fragment of a greater fragmentation. It is a threedimensional perspective that has broken away frmn the whole, while containing
the lack of its own containment. There are no mysteries in these vestiges, no
traces of an end or a beginning.
CRACKING PERSPECTIVES AND GRIT IN THE VANISHING POINT

Parallactic perspectives have introduced themselves into the new earth projects in a way that is physical and three-dimensionaL This kind of convergence
subverts gestalt surfaces and turns sites into vast illusions. The ground becornes
a map.
The map of n1y Non-Site # 1 (an indoor earthwork) has six vanishing points
that lose themselves in a pre-existent earth mound that is at the center of a
hexagonal airfield in the Pine Barren Plains in South New Jersey. Six runways
radiate around a central axis. These runways anchor my 3 I subdivisions. The
actual Non-Site is made up of 31 metal containers of painted blue aluminum,
each containing sand from the actual site.
De Maria's parallel chalk lines are I2 feet apart and run a half a mile along
the Dry Lake of El Mirage in the Mojave Desert. The dry mud under these
lines is cracking into an infinite variety of polygons, mainly six-sided. Under
the beating sun shrinkage is constantly going on causing irregular outlines.
Rapid drying causes widely spaced cracks, while slow drying causes closely
spaced cracks. (See E. M. Kindle's "Some Factors Affecting the Development
of Mud Cracks," Journal of Geology,Vol. 25,1917, p. 136.) De Maria's lines make
one conscious of a weakening cohesion that spreads out in all directions.
Nevada is a good place for the person who wants to study cracks.
Heizer's Co111pression Line is made by the earth pressing against the sides of
two parallel lengths of plywood, so that they converge into two facing sunken
perspectives. The earth surrounding this double perspective is composed of
"hardpan" (a hard impervious sediment that does not become plastic, but can
be shattered by explosives). A drainage layer exists under the entire work.
THE VALUE OF TIME

For too long the artist has been estranged from his own "time." Critics, by focusing on the "art object," deprive the artist of any existence in the world of
'both mind and matter. The mental process of the artist which takes place in
time is disowned, so that a commodity value can be maintained by a system
independent of the artist. Art, in this sense, is considered "timeless" or a prod-

Ill

DENNIS 0 P PENH E I M, Earth Proposal for Gal/ery Space, 1968.

Base Side Panel Frame (glass broi<en). (From Edward Ruscha's

Royal Rood Test.)

uct of "no tin1e at all"; this becomes a convenient way to exploit the artist out
of his rightful claim to his temporal processes. The arguments for the contention that time is unreal is a fiction of language, and not of the material of
time or art. Criticism, dependent on rational illusions, appeals to a society that
values only commodity type art separated from the artist's mind. By separating
art from the "primary process," the artist is cheated in more ways than one.
Separate "things," "forms," "objects," "shapes," etc., with beginnings and endings are mere convenient fictions: there is only an uncertain disintegrating
order that transcends the limits of rational separations. The fictions erected in
the eroding time stream are apt to be swamped at any moment. The brain itself
resembles an eroded rock from which ideas and ideals leak.
When a thing is seen through the consciousness of temporality, it is changed
into something that is nothing. This all-engulfmg sense provides the mental
ground for the object, so that it ceases being a mere object and becomes art.
The object gets to be less and less but exists as something clearer. Every object,
if it is art, is charged with the rush of time even though it is static, but all this
depends on the viewer. Not everybody sees the art in the same way, only an
artist viewing art knows the ecstasy or dread, and this viewing takes place in
time. A great artist can make art by simply casting a glance. A set of glances
could be as solid as any thing or place, but the society continues to cheat the
artist out of his "art oflooking," by only valuing "art objects." The existence of
the artist in time is worth as much as the finished product. Any critic who devalues the ti111e of the artist is the enemy of art and the artist. The stronger and
clearer the artist's tJiew of time the more he will resent any slander on this domain. By desecrating this domain, certain critics defraud the work and mind of
the artist. Artists with a weak view of time are easily deceived by this victimizing kind of criticism, and are seduced into some trivial history. An artist is enslaved by time only if the time is controlled by someone or something other

112

than himself. The deeper an artist sinks into the tin'le stream the more it becomes oblivion; because of this, he must remain close to the temporal surfaces.
Many would like to forget time altogether, because it conceals the "death
principle" (every authentic artist knows this). Floating in this temporal river
are the ren'"tnants of art history, yet the "present" cannot support the cultures of
Europe, or even the archaic or primitive civilizations; it must instead explore
the pre- and post-historic mind; it must go into the places where remote futures n'"teet re1note pasts.
NOTE

r.

The sinister in a primitive sense seems to have its origin in what could be called
"quality gardens" (Paradise). Dreadful things seem to have happened in those halfforgotten Edens.Why does the Garden of Delights suggest something perverse' Torture gardens. Deer Park. The Grottos of Tiberi us. Gardens of Virtue are somehow
always "lost." A degraded paradise is perhaps worse than a degraded hell. America
abounds in banal heavens, in vapid "happy-hunting grounds," and in "natural" hells
like Death Valley National Monument or The Devil's Playground. The public "sculpture garden" for the n1ost part is an outdoor "roon1," that in time becomes a limbo of
modern isms. Too much thinking about "gardens" leads to perplexity and agitation.
Gardens like the levels of criticism bring one to the brink of chaos. This footnote is
turning into a dizzying maze, full of tenuous paths and innumerable riddles. The
abysmal problem of gardens somehow involves a fall from somewhere or smnething.
The certainty of the absolute garden will never be regained.

113

ROI:JERT SMITHSON, Tar Paal and Gravel Pit (model), 1966.

MINUS TWElVE

(I

r. USELESSNESS
A. Zone of standard modules.
B. Monoliths without color.
C. An ever narrowing field of
approximation known as the
Method of Exhaustion.
D. The circumscribed cube.
2.ENTROPY
A. Equal units approaching
divisibility.
B. Something inconsistent with
con1n1on experience or having contradictory qualities.
C. Hollow blocks in a windowless room.
D. Militant laziness.

C. Toward an aesthetics of

disappointment.
D. No doors.
5. EMPTINESS
A. A flying tomb disguised as an
airplane.
B. Some plans for logical stupefactions.
C. The case of the "missinglink."
D. False theorems and grand
mistakes.

3.ABSENCE
A. Postulates of nominalism.
B. Idleness at the North Pole.
C. Exclusion of space.
D. Real things become mental
vacanoes.

6. INERTIA
A. Memory of a dismantled
parallelepiped.
B. The humorous dimensions
of time.
C. A refutation of the End of
Endlessness.
D. Zeno's Second Paradox
(infinite regression against
movement).

4 INACCESSIBILITY
A. Gray walls and glass floors.
B. Domain of the Dinosaurs.

7. FUTILITY
A. Dogma against value.
B. Collapses into five sections .

114

Art, edited by Gregory Battcock, 1968

C. To go from one extreme to

another.
D. Put everything into doubt.
S. BLINDNESS
A. Two binocular holes that
appear endlessly.
B. Invisible orbs.
C. Abolished sight.
D. The splitting of the vanishing
point.
9 STILLNESS

A. Sinking back into echoes.

B. Extinguished by reflections.
C. Obsolete ideas to be promulgated (teratologies and other
marvels).
D. Cold storage.
IO.

EQUIVALENCE
A. Refusal to privilege one sign
over another.

B. Different types of sameness.

C. Odd objections to uncertain
symmetries in regular systerns.
D. Any declaration of unity
results in two things.
II.

DISLOCATION
A. Deluging the deluge.

B. The Great Plug.

C. The Winter Solstice of
4000 B.c. (a temporal
dementia).
D. Toward innumerable futures.
n. FORGETFULNESS

A. Aluminum cities on a lead

planet.
B. The Museum of the Void.
C. A compact mass in a dim
passageway (an anti-object).
D. A series of sightings down
escarpn1ents.

115

AERLA.l

(I

Proposals for the Dallas-For-t Worth Regional Airport (Tippetts-AbbettMcCarthy-Stratton, Architects and Engineers)
Art today is no longer an architectural afterthought, or an object to attach to a
building after it is finished, but rather a total engagement with the building
process from the ground up and from the sky down. The old landscape of naturalism and realism is being replaced by the new landscape of abstraction and
artifice.
How art should be installed in and around an airport makes one conscious
of this new landscape. Just as our satellites explore and chart the moon and
the planets, so might the artist explore the unknown sites that surround our
airports.
The future air terminal exists both in terms of mind and thing. It suggests
the infinite in a fmite way. The straight lines of landing fields and runways
bring into existence a perception of "perspective" that evades all our conceptions of nature. The naturalism of seventeeth-, eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury art is replaced by non-objective sense of site. The landscape begins to
look more like a three dimensional map than a rustic garden. Aerial photography and air transportation bring into view the surface features of this shifting
world of perspectives. The rational structures of buildings disappear into irrational disguises and are pitched into optical illusions. The world seen frotn the
air is abstract and illusive. From the window of an airplane one can see drastic
changes of scale, as one ascends and descends. The effect takes one from the
dazzling to the monotonous in a short space of time-from the shrinking terminal to the obstructing clouds.
Below this concatenation of aerial perceptions is the conception of the air
terminal itself, firmly rooted in the earth. The principal runways and series of
terminals will extend from I I ,ooo feet to 14,000 feet, or about the length of
Central Park. The outer limits of the terminal could be brought into consciousness by a type of art, which I will call aerial art, that could be seen frotn
aircraft on takeoff and landing, or not seen at all.
On the boundaries of the taxiways, runways or approach "clear zones" we
might construct "earthworks" or grid type frameworks close to the ground
level. These aerial sites would not only be visible from arriving and departing
aircraft, but they would also define the terminal's manmade perimeters in
terms oflandscaping.
The terminal complex might include a gallery (or aerial museum) that
would provide visual information about where these aerial sites are situated.
Studio Intematiollal, February-April 1969

116

Diagrams, maps, photographs, and movies of the projects under construction

could be exhibited-thus the terminal complex and its entire airfield site
would expand its meaning from the central spaces of the terminal itself to the
edges of the air fields.
Letters A, B, C, and D (see aerial map) stand for installations of art on the
margins of the main terminal complex. This art is remote fiom the eye of the
viewer the way a galaxy is remote from the earth. In fact, the entire air terminal may be considered conceptually as an artificial 1t11iverse, and as everyone
knows, everything in the known universe isn't entirely visible. There is no reason why one shouldn't look at art through a telescope. Our terminal universe
is built in the shape of a rectangle with two diagonals set in a photo firmament
of haze and non-objective land masses. The double white rectangles within the
grid shall someday contain a series of terminals each one the size of Grand
Central Station. At the moment we are considering this air terminal through
the ca111era obswra of our nlind-the camera takes a picture but does not see it.
"Some ideas are logical in conception" says Sol LeWitt, "and illogical perceptually." Visibility is often marked by both mental and atmospheric turbidity.
Just how we should look at art is a question that is rarely considered. Simply
looking at art at eye-level is no solution. If we consider the aerial map as "a
thing in itself," we will notice the affects of scattered light and weak tonereproduction. High-altitude aerial photography shows us how little there is
to see, and seems to prove what Lewis Carroll once said, "They say that we
Photographers are a blind race at best." Carl Andre sees the camera as the most
catastrophic invention of the Modern Age.
Aerial art can therefore not only give limits to "space," but also the hidden
dimensions of "time" apart from natural duration-an artificial tillle that can
suggest galactic distance here on earth. Its focus on "non-visual" space and
time begins to shape an esthetic based on the ai1port as an idea, and not simply
as a mode of transportation. This airport is but a dot in the vast infmity of universes, an imperceptible point in a cosmic immensity, a speck in an ir:npenetrable nowhere-aerial art reflects to a degree this vastness.
A. ROBERT MORRIS

His proposal is an "earth mound" circular in shape and trapezoidal in cross

section. Its surface would be sod, and its radius might be extended as much as a
thousand feet-easily viewed from arriving and departing aircraft.
B. CARL ANDRE

A crater formed by a one-ton bomb dropped from ro,ooo feet.

or
An acre of blue-bonnets (state flowers of Texas).

117

ROBERT SMITHSON,Aerial map-proposal for Dallas-Fort Worth Regional

Airport, 1967.

SOL LEW ITT, Box in the hole. A report on a cube that was buried at
Visser House in Bergeyk, Holland on July I, 1968. From notebook for
"Earthworks" exhibition.

C. ROBERT SMITHSON

A progression of triangular concrete pavements that would result in a spiral effect. This could be built as large as the site would allow, and could be seen from
approaching and departing aircraft.
D. SOL LEWITT

His proposal is "non-visual" and involves the sub-stratum of the site. He emphasizes the "concept" of art rather than the" object" that results from its practice. The precise spot in the site would not be revealed-and would consist of
a small cube of unknown contents cast inside a larger cube of concrete. The
cube would then be buried in the earth.

II 0

IDENTS OF MIRROR-TRAVEl IN THE YUCATAN

( 96

Of the Mayan ideas on the forms of the ear-th we know little. The Aztec
thought the crest of the earth was the top of a huge saurian
a
kind of crocodile, which was the object of a certain cult It is probable
that the Mayan had a similar belief, but it is not impossible that at the
same time they considered the wor-ld to consist of seven compartments,
perhaps stepped as four layer-s.
J. Eric S.Thompson, Maya Hieroglyphic Writing
The char-acteristic feature of the savage mind is its timelessness: its object
is to grasp the world as both a synchronic and a diachronic totality and
the knowledge which it draws therefrom is like that afforded of a room
by mirror-s frxed on opposite walls, which r-eflect each other (as well as
objects in the intervening space) although without being strictly par-allel.
Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind

Driving away from Merida down Highway z6r one becomes aware of the indifferent horizon. Quite apathetically it rests on the ground devouring everything that looks like something. One is always crossing the horizon, yet it always remains distant. In this line where sky meets earth, objects cease to exist.
Since the car was at all tin1es on some leftover horizon, one might say that the
car was imprisoned in a line, a line that is in no way linear. The distance
seemed to put restrictions on all forward movement, thus bringing the car to a
countless series of standstills. How could one advance on the horizon, if it was
already present under the wheels? A horizon is something else other than a
horizon; it is closedness in openness, it is an enchanted region where down is
up. Space can be approached, but time is far away. Time is devoid of objects
when one displaces all destinations. The car kept going on the same horizon.
Looking down on the map (it was all there), a tangled network ofhorizon
lines on paper called "roads," some red, some black. Yucatan, Quintana Roo,
Campeche, Tabasco, Chiapas and Guatemala congealed into a mass of gaps,
points, and little blue threads (called rivers). The map legend contained signs
in a neat row: archeological monuments (black), colonial monuments (black),
historical site (black), bathing resort (blue), spa (red), hunting (green), fishing
(blue), arts and crafts (green), aquatic sports (blue), national park (green), service station (yellow). On the map of Mexico they were scattered like the
droppings of some small animal.
The Tourist Guide and Directory
rested on the car seat. On
its cover was a crude drawing depicting the Spaniards meeting the Mayans, in
the background was the temple of Chichen Itzi On the top left-hand comer

Artfontllt, September r969

119

Vicinities of the Nine Mirror Displacements.

was printed "'UY U TAN A KIN PECH' (listen how they talk)-EXCLAIMED THE MAYANS ON HEARING THE SPANISH LANGUAGE,"
and in the bottom left-hand corner "'YUCATAN CAMPECHE'-REPEATED THE SPANIARDS WHEN THEY HEARD THESE WORDS."
A caption under all this said "Mayan and Spanish First Meeting 1517." In the
"Official Guide" to Uxmal, Fig. 28 shows 27 little drawings of "Pottery Found
at Uxmal." The shading on each pot consists of countless dots. Interest in such
pots began to wane. The steady hiss of the air-conditioner in the rented Dodge
Dart might have been the voice ofEecath-the god of thought and wind. Wayward thoughts blew around the car, wind blew over the scrub bushes outside.
On the cover of Victor W Von Hagan's paperback vVorld of the Maya it said, "A
history of the Mayas and their resplendent civilization that grew out of the jungles and wastelands of Central America." In the rear-view mirror appeared Tezcatlipoca-demiurge of the "smoking-mirror." "All those guide books are of no
use," said Tezcatlipoca. "You nmst travel at random, like the first Mayans; you risk
getting lost in the thickets, but that is the only way to make art."
Through the windshield the road stabbed the horizon, causing it to bleed a
sunny incandescence. One couldn't help feeling that this was a ride on a knife
covered with solar blood. As it cut into the horizon a disruption took place. The
tranquil drive became a sacrifice of matter that led to a discontinuous state of
being, a world of quiet delirium. Just sitting there brought one into the wound
of a terrestrial victim. This peaceful war between the elements is ever present in
Mexico-an echo, perhaps, of the Aztec and Mayan human sacrifices.
THE FIRST MIRROR DISPLACEMENT:

Somewhere between Uman and Muna is a charred site. The people in this region clear land by burning it out. On this field of ashes (called by the natives a
"milpa") twelve mirrors were cantilevered into low mounds of red soil. Each
120

mirror was twelve inches square, and supported from above and below by the
scorched earth alone. The distribution of the squares followed the irregular
contours on the ground, and they were placed in a random parallel direction.
Bits of earth spilled onto the surfaces, thus sabotaging the perfect reflections of
the sky. Dirt hung in the sultry sky. Bits of blazing cloud ll1L'Ced with the ashy
nnss. The displacement was in the ground, not 011 it. Burnt tree stumps spread
around the mirrors and vanished into the arid jungles.
THE SECOND MIRROR DISPLACEMENT:

In a suburb of Uxnnl, which is to say nowhere, the second displacement was

deployed. What appeared to be a shallow quarry was dug into the ground to a
depth of about four to five feet, exposing a bright red clay mixed with white
limestone fiagtnents. Near a small cliff the twelve mirrors were stuck into
clods of earth. It was photographed from the top of the cliff. Again Tezcatlipoca
spoke, "That camera is a portable tomb, you must remember that." On this same
site, the Great Ice Cap of Gondwanaland was constructed according to a map
outline on page 459 of Marshall Kay's and Edwin H. Colbert's Stratigrnpl1y nnd
L{{e History. It was an" earth-map" made of white limestone. A bit of the Carboniferous period is now installed near Uxmal. That great age of calcium carbonate seemed a fitting offering for a land so rich in limestone. Reconstructing
a land mass that existed 350 to 305 million years ago on a terrain once controlled by sundry Mayan gods caused a collision in time that left one with a
sense of the timeless.
Timelessness is found in the lapsed moments of perception, in the common

First Mirmr Displacement.

Second Mirror Displacement.

121

Fourth Mirror Displacement.

Third Mirror Displacement.

pause that breaks apart into a sandstorm of pauses. The malady of wanting to
"make" is 1111111ade, and the malady of wanting to be "able" is disabled. Gondwanaland is a kind of rnenwry, yet it is not a 1nemory, it is but an incognito
land mass that has been ttlltlzouglzt about and turned into a Map oflmpasse. You
cannot visit Gondwanaland, but you can visit a "map" of it.
THE THIRD MIRROR DISPLACEMENT:

The road went through butterfly swarms. Near Bolonchen de Rejon thousands of yellow, white and black swallowtail butterflies flew past the car in erratic, jerky flight patterns. Several smashed into the car radio aerial and were
suspended on it because of the wind pressure. In the side of a heap of crushed
liiTtestone the twelve rnirrors were cantilevered in the midst oflarge clusters of
butterflies that had landed on the limestone. For brief moments flying butterflies were reflected; they seemed to fly through a sky of gravel. Shadows cast by
the mirrors contrasted with those seconds of color. A scale in terms of "tinte"
rather than "space" took place. The lTtirror itself is not subject to duration, because it is an ongoing abstraction that is always available and timeless. The reflections, on the other hand, are fleeting instances that evade measure. Space is
the remains, or corpse, of tin1e, it has dimensions. "Objects" are "sham space,"
the excrement of thought and language. Once you start seeing objects in a
positive or negative way you are on the road to derangement. Objects are
phantoms of the mind, as false as angels. Itzpaplotl is the Mayan Obsidian Butterfly, "a demonic goddess of unpredictable fate represented as beautiful but
with death syrnbols on her face." (See The Gods oflvlexico by C. A. Burland.)
This relates to the "black obsidian mirror" used by Tezcatlipoca into which he
122

Fifth Mirror Displacement.

Sixth Mirror Displacement.

gazed to see the future. "Unpredictable fate" seemed to guide the butterflies
over the mirror displacernents. This also brings to mind the concave r:nirrors of
the Olmccs found at La Venta, Tabasco State, and researched by Robert Heizer,
the archeologist. "The mirrors were masterpieces. Each had been so perfectly
ground that when we rotated it the reflection we caught was never distorted
in the least. Yet the hematite was so tough that we could not even scratch it
with knives of hard Swedish steel. Such mirrors doubtless served equally well
to adorn important personages or to kindle ritual fires." ("Gifts for the Jaguar
God" by Philip Drucker and Robert F. Heizer, National Geographic, September
1956.) "The Jaguar in the mirror that smokes in the World of the Elements
knows the work of Carl Andre," said Tezcatlipoca and Itzpaplotl at the same
tin1e in the same voice. "He knows the Future travels backwards," they contin-

ued. Then they both vanished into the pavement of Highway

261.

THE fOURTH t11RROR DISPLACEMENT:

South of Campeche, on the way to Champoton, mirrors were set on the

beach of the Gulf of Mexico. Jade colored water splashed near the n1irrors,
which were supported by dry seaweed and eroded rocks, but the reflections
abolished the supports, and now words abolish the reflections. The unnar:neable tonalities of blue that were once square tide pools of sky have vanished
into the camera, and now rest in the cemetery of the printed page-Ancora in

Arcadia 11/orte. A sense of arrested breakdown prevails over the level rnirror surfaces and the unlevel ground. "The true fiction eradicates the false reality," said
the voiceless voice of Chalchihuitlicue-the Surd of the Sea.
The mirror displacernent cannot be expressed in rational dimensions. The
123

distances between the twelve r:nirrors are shadowed disconnections, where

measure is dropped and incomputable. Such mirror surfaces cannot be understood by reason. Who can divulge from what part of the sky the blue color
came? Who can say how long the color lasted? Must "blue" rnean something?
Why do the mirrors display a conspiracy of muteness concerning their very
existence? When does a displacement become a rnisplacement? These are forbidding questions that place comprehension in a predicament. The questions
the mirrors ask always fall short of the answers. Mirrors thrive on surds, and
generate incapacity. Reflections fall onto the mirrors without logic, and in so
doing invalidate every rational assertion. Inexpressible limits are on the other
side of the incidents, and they will never be grasped.
THE FIFTH MIRROR DISPLACEMENT:

At Palenque the lush jungle begins. The palisade, Stone Houses, Fortified
Houses, Capital of the People of the Snake or City of Snakes are the names
this region has been called. Writing about mirrors brings one into a groundless
jungle where words buzz incessantly instead of insects. Here in the heat of reason (nobody knows what that is), one tends to remember and think in lumps.
What really n<akes one listless is ill-founded enthusiasm, say the zeal for "pure
color." If colors can be pure and innocent, can they not also be impure and
guilty?
In the jungle all light is paralyzed. Particles of color infected the molten reflections on the twelve mirrors, and in so doing, engendered mixtures of dark-

Seventh Mirror Displacement

124

ness and light. Color as an agent of matter filled the reflected illur:ninations
with shadowy tones, pressing the light into dusty rnaterial opacity. Flarnes of
light were imprisoned in a jmnbled spectrll!Tl of greens. Retracting sparks of
sunshine seemed smothered under the weight of clouded mixtures-yellow,
green, blue, indigo and violet. The word" color" means at its origin to "cover"
or "hide." Matter eats up light and "covers" it with a confusion of color. Luminous lines emanate from the edges of the mirrors, yet the surface reflections
manifest nothing but shady greens. Deadly greens that devour light. Acrylic
and Day-glo are nothing to these raw states of light and color. Real color is
risky, not like the tame stuff that comes out of tubes. We all know that there
could never be anything like a "color-pathos" or a pathology of color. How
could "yellow is yellow" survive as a malarial tautology? Who in their right
mind would ever come up with a concept of perceptual petit mal? Nobody
could ever believe that certain shades of green are carriers of chromatic fever.
The notion that light is sutTering from a color-sickness is both repugnant and
absurd. That color is worse than eternity is an affront to enlightened criticism.
Everybody knows that "pathetic" colors don't exist. Yet, it is that very lack of
"existence" that is so deep, profound, and terrible. There is no chromatic scale
down there because all colors are present, spawning agglutinations out of agglutinations. It is the incoherent mass that breeds color and kills light. The
poised mirrors seemed to buckle slightly over the uncertain ground. Disjointed square streaks and smudges hovered close to incomprehensible shadows. Proportion was disconnected and in a condition of suspense. The double

Eighth Mirror Displacement

Ninth Mirror Displacement

125

allure of the ground and the mirrors brought forth apparitions. Out of green
reflections came the networks of Coatlicue, known to the Mayans as the Serpent Lady: Mother Earth. Twistings and windings were frozen in the mirrors.
On the outskirts of the ruins of Palenque or in the skirts of Coatlicue, rocks
were overturned; first the rock was photographed, then the pit that remained.
"Under each rock is an orgy of scale," said Coatlicue, while lashing a green
snake from a nearby "killer tree" (parasite vines that smother a tree, till they
become the tree). Each pit contained miniature earthworks-tracks and traces
of insects and other sundry small creatures. In some beetle dung, cobwebs, and
nameless slin1e. In others cocoons, tiny ant nests and raw roots. If an artist
could see the world through the eyes of a caterpillar he might be able to make
smne fascinating art. Each one of these secret dens was also the entrance to the
abyss. Dungeons that dropped away from the eyes into a damp cosmos of fungus and mold-an exhibition of clammy solitude.
THE COLLOQUY OF COATLICUE AND CHRONOS

"You don't have to have cows to be a cowboy."

Nudie
You have no future.
CHRONOS: And you have no past.
COATLICUE: That doesn't leave us much of a present.
COATLICUE:

Maybe we are doomed to being merely some "lightyears" with missing tenses.

CHRONOS:

Or two inefficient memories.

So this is Palenque.

COATLICUE:
CHRONOS:

Yes; as soon as it was named it ceased to exist.

Do you think those overturned rocks exist?
COATLICUE: They exist in the
way that undiscovered moons

COATLICUE:
CHRONOS:

orbiting an unknown planet exist.

How can we talk about what exists, when we hardly
exist ourselves?

CHRONOS:

COATLICUE:

You don't have to have existence to exist.

THE SIXTH MIRROR DISPLACEMENT:

From Ruinas Bonampak to Agua Azul in a single engine airplane with a broken window. Below, the jungle extinguished the ground, and spread the horizon into a smoldering periphery. This perimeter was subject to a double perception by which, on one hand, all escaped to the outside, and on the other, all
collapsed inside; no boundaries could hold this jungle together. A dual catastrophe engulfed one "like a point," yet the airplane continued as though
nothing had happened. The eyes were circumscribed by a widening circle of
vertiginous foliage, all dimensions at that edge were uprooted and lung out126

ward into green blurs and blue haze. But one just continued smoking and
laughing. The match boxes in Mexico are odd, they are "things in themselves."
While one enjoys a cigarette, he can look at his yellow box of"Clasicos-De
Lujo-La Central." The match
has thoughtfully put a reproduction of
Venus De Milo on the front cover, and a changing array of"fme arts" on the
back cover, such as Pedro Brueghel's The Blinrl
the Blinrl. The sea of
leaves below continued to exfoliate and infoliate; it thickened to a great degree. Out of the smoke of a Salem carne the voice of Ometecutli-the Dual
Being, but one could not hear what he had to say because the airplane engine
roared too loudly. Down in the lagoons and sw;nnps one could see i!!finite,
isotropic, threc-rlilllcnsional and holllogcneous space sinking out of sight. Up and
down the plane glided, over the inundating colors in the circular jungle. A
fugitive seizure of "clear-air turbulence" tossed the plane about and caused
mild nausea. The jungle grows only by rneans of its own negation-art does
the san1e. Inexorably the circle tightened its coils as the plane gyrated over the
landing strip. The immense horizon contracted its endless rings. Lower and
lower into the vortex of Agua Azul, into the cairn infernal center, and into the
flarning spiral of Xiuhtecutli. Once on the ground another match was
struck-the dugouts on the Rio Usumacinta were waiting.
The current of the river carried one swiftly along. Perception was stunned
by small whirlpools suddenly bubbling up till they exhausted thernselves into
minor rapids. No isolated rnoment on the river, no fixed point, just flickering
moments of tumid duration. Iguanas sunning thernselves on the incessant
shores. Hyperbole touched the bottom of the literal. An excess of green sunk
any upward movement. Today, we are afflicted with an inversion of hyper-

bole-grm;ity. Rivers of Lead. Lakes of Asphalt. Heavy water. Generalized

mud. The Caretaker of Dullness-habit-lurks everywhere. Tlazolteotl Eater
of Filth rules. Near a pile of rubble in the river, by what was once one of the
Temples ofYaxchilan, the dugout stopped. On a high sandbank the mirrors
were placed.
THE SEVENTH MIR.ROR DISPLACEMENT:

Yaxchilan may not be \Vas ted (or, as good as waste, domned to wasting) but still
building itself out of secrets and shadows. On a multifarious confusion of ruins
are frail huts made of sticks with thatched roofs. The world of the Maya and its
cosmography has been defonned and beaten down by the pressure of years.
The natives at Yaxchilan are weary because of that long yesterday, that unending calamitous day. They might even be disappointed by the grand nullity of
their own past attaimnents. Shattered recesses with wild growths of creepers
and weeds disclosed a broken geometry. Turning the pages of a book on
Mayan ternples, one is relieved of the futile and stupefYing mazes of the tropical density. The load of actual, on-the-spot perception is drained away into
banal appreciation. The ghostly photographic remains are sapped memories, a
127

Olmec Jaguar Mask, La Venta, Mexico. Covered by the Olmecs under 500 tons of
clay and a platform of orange and yellow bricks, still discernible in embankment.

mock reality of decomposition. Pigs run around the tottering masses, and so
do tourists. Horizons were submerged and suffocated in an asphyxiation of
vanishing points. Archeologists had tried to transport a large stone stele out of
the region by floating it on dugouts up the Usumacinta to Agua Azul, but they
couldn't get it into an airplane, so they hc1d to take it back to Yaxchilan. There
it remains today, collecting moss-a monument to Sisyphus. Near this stele,
the mirrors were balanced in a tentacled tree. A giant vegetable squid inverted
in the ground. Sunrays filtered into the reflections. The displacement addressed
itself to a teeming frontality that made the tree into a jumbled wall full of
snarls and tangles. The mirror surfaces being disconnected from each other
"destructuralized" any literal logic. Up and down parallels were dislocated into
twelve centers of gravity.
A precarious balance existed somewhere between the tree and the dead
leaves. The gravity lost itself in a web of possibilities; as one looked more and
more possibilities emerged because nothing was certain. Nine of the twelve
mirrors in the photograph are plainly visible, two have sunk into shadow. One
on the lower right is all but eclipsed. The displacement is divided into five
rows. On the site the rows would come and go as the light fell. Countless
chromatic patches were wrecked on the mirrors, flakes of sunshine dispersed
over the reflecting surfaces and obliterated the square edges, leaving indistinct
pulverizations of color on an indeterminate grid. A mirror on the third row

128

jamrned between tvvo branches flashed into dematerialization. Other mirrors

escaped into visual extinguishment. Bits of reflected jungle retreated from
one's perception. Each point of focus spilled into cavities of foliage. Glutinous
light submerged vision under a wilderness of unassimilated seeing. Scraps of
sight accmnulated until the eyes were engulfed by scrambled reflections. What
was seen reeled off into indecisive zones. The eyes seemed to look. Were they
looking? Perhaps. Other eyes were looking. A Mexican gave the displacement
a long, imploring gaze. Even if you cannot look, others will look for you. Art
brings sight to a halt, but that halt has a way of unravelling itself. All the reflections expired into the thickets of Yaxchilan. One rnust remernber that writing
on art replaces presence by absence by substituting the abstraction of language
for the real thing. There was a friction between the mirrors and the tree; now
there is a friction between language and memory. A lTternory of reflections becon1es an absence of absences.
On this site the third upside-down tree was planted. The first is in Alfred,
New York State, the second is in Captiva Island, Florida; lines drawn on a map
will connect them. Are they to terns of rootlessness that relate to one another?
Do they mark a dizzy path from one doubtful point to another? Is this a mode
of travel that does not in the least try to establish a coherent coming and going
between the here and the there? Perhaps they are dislocated "North and South
poles" marking peripheral places, polar regions of the mind fixed in mundane
nutter-poles that have slipped from the geographical moorings of the
world's axis. Central points that evade being central. Are they dead roots that
haplessly hang off inverted trunks in a vast "no man's land" that drifts toward
vacancy? In the riddling zones, nothing is for sure. Nevertheless, flies are attracted to such riddles. Flies would come and go fi:om all over to look at the
upside-down trees, and peer at them with their compound eyes. What the fly
sees is "something a little worse than a newspaper photograph as it would look
to us under a magnifYing glass." (See Anil1111ls vflithout B11ckboi1es, Ralph Buchsbaum.) The "trees" are dedicated to the flies. Dragonflies, fruit flies, horseflies.
They are all welcome to walk on the roots with their sticky, padded feet, in
order to get a close look. Why shouldflies be without 11rt?
THE EIGHTH MIRROR DISPLACEMENT:

Against the current of the Usumacinta the dugout headed for the Island of
Blue Waters. The island annihilates itself in the presence of the river, both in
fact and mind. Small bits of sediment dropped away from the sand flats into
the river. Small bits of perception dropped away from the edges of eyesight.
Where is the island? The unknowable zero island. Were the mirrors mounted
on something that was dropping, draining, eroding, trickling, spilling away?
Sight turned away from its own looking. Particles of matter slowly crumbled
down the slope that held the mirrors. Tinges, stains, tints, and tones crumbled
into the eyes. The eyes became two wastebaskets filled with diverse colors, var129

ROBERT SMITHSON, Overturned Rock,Uxmal (first phase), 1969.

ROBERT SMITHSON, Overturned Rock,Uxmal (second phase), 1969.

iegations, ashy hues, blotches and sunburned chromatics. To reconstruct what

the eyes see in words, in an "ideal language" is a vain exploit. Why not reconstruct one's inability to see? Let us give passing shape to the unconsolidated
views that surround a work of art, and develop a type of "anti-vision" or negative seeing. The river shored up clay, loess, and similar matter, that shored up
the slope, that shored up the mirrors. The mind shored up thoughts and memories, that shored up points of view, that shored up the swaying glances of the
eyes. Sight consisted of knotted reflections bouncing off and on the rnirrors
and the eyes. Every clear view slipped into its own abstract slump. All viewpoints choked and died on the tepidity of the tropical air. The eyes, being infected by all kinds of nameless tropisms, couldn't see straight. Vision sagged,
caved in, and broke apart. Trying to look at the mirrors took the sh<1pe of a
game of pool under water. All the clear ideas of what had been done melted
into perceptual puddles, causing the brain to gurgle thoughts. Walking conditioned sight, and sight conditioned walking, till it seemed only the feet could
see. Squinting helped somewhat, yet that didn't keep views from tumbling
over each other. The oblique angles of the mirrors disclosed an altitude so remote that bits of "place" were cast into a white sky. How could that section of
visibility be put together again? Perhaps the eyes should have been screwed up
into a sharper focus. But no, the focus was at times cock-eyed, at tirnes myopic,
overexposed, or cracked. Oh, for the happy days of pure walls and pure floors!
Flatness was nowhere to be found. Walls of collapsed mud, and floors of
bleached detritus replaced the flatness of rooms. The eyes crawled over grains,
chips, and other jungle obstructions. From the blind side reflections studded
the shore-into an anti-vision. Outside this island are other islands of incom-

130

mensurable dir:nension. For example, the Land of Mu, built on "shaky ground"
by Ignatius Donnelly in his book Atlantis, the Antedihn;ian World, r882, based on
an imaginative translation of Mayan script by Diego de Landa. 1 The memory
of what is not may be better than the anmesia of what is.
THE NINTH MIRROR DISPLACEMENT:

Some "enantiornorphic" travel through Villahermosa, Frontera, Ciudad del

Carmen, past the Laguna de Terminos. Two asymmetrical trails that mirror
each other could be called enantiomorphic after those two cornmon enantiomorphs-the right and left hands. Eyes are enantiomorphs. Writing thereflection is supposed to match the physical reality, yet somehow the enantiomorphs don't quite fit together. The right hand is always at variance with
the left. Villaherrnosa on the map is an irregular yellow shape with a star in it.
Villahermosa on the earth is an irregular yellow shape with no star in it. Frontera and Ciudad del Carmen are white circles with black rings around thern.
Frontera and Ciudad del Carmen on the earth are white circles with no black
rings around them. You say nobody was looking when they passed through
those cities. You nuy be right, but then you may be wrong. You are caught in
your own enantiomorph.
The double aspect of Quetzalcoatl is less a person than an operation of
totemic perception. Quetzalcoatl becomes one half of an enantiomorph (coal/
means twin) in search of the other half. A mirror looking for its reflection but
never quite finding it. The morning star of Quetzal is apt to be polarized in the
shadowy reflection of the evening star. The journeys of Quetzalcoatl are
recorded in Sahagun's Historia Univcrsnl de las Cosas de Nttcvn Espann, parts of
which are translated into English in T/1c Gods of J\![exico by C. A. Burland. In
Sahagun's Book III, Chapter XIII, "Which tells of the departure of Quetzalcoat! towards Tlapallan (the place of many colours) and of the things he performed on the way thither," Quetzalcoatl rested near a great tree (Quanhtitlan). Quetzalcoatllooked into his "obsidian mirror" and said "Now I become
aged." "The name of that place has ever afterwards been Ucuetlatitlan (Beside
the Tree of Old Age). Suddenly he seized stones frorn the path and threw them
against the unlucky tree. For n1any years thereafter the stones remained encrusted in the ancient tree." By traveling with Quetzalcoatl one becomes
aware of primordial time or final time-The Tree of Rocks. (A memo for a
possible "earthwork"-balance slabs of rock in tree limbs.) But if one wishes
to be ingenious enough to erase tin1e one requires mirrors, not rocks. A
strange thing, this branching mode of travel: one perceives in every past moment a parting of ways, a highway spreads into a bifurcating and trifurcating
region of zigzags. Near Sabancuy the last displacement in the cycle was done.
In mangrove (also called n1angrave) branches and roots mirrors were suspended. There will be those who will say "that's getting close to nature." But
what is meant by such "nature" is anything but natural. When the conscious

131

artist perceives "nature" everywhere he starts detecting falsity in the apparent

thickets, in the appearance of the real, and in the end he is skeptical about all
notions of existence, objects, reality, etc. Art works out of the inexplicable.
Contrary to affirmations of nature, art is inclined to semblances and masks, it
flourishes on discrepancy. It sustains itself not on differentiation, but dedifferentiation, not on creation but decreation, not on nature but denaturalization,
etc. Judgments and opinions in the area of art are doubtful murmurs in mental
mud. Only appearances are fertile; they are gateways to the primordial. Every
artist owes his existence to such mirages. The ponderous illusions of solidity,
the non-existence of things, is what the artist takes for "materials." It is this absence of matter that weighs so heavy on him, causing him to invoke gravity.
Actual delirium is devoid of insanity; if insanity existed it would break the spell
of productive apathy. Artists are not motivated by a need to communicate;
travel over the unfathomable is the only condition.
Living beings dwell in their expectations rather than in their
senses. If they are ever to see what they see, they must first in a
manner stop living; they must suspend the will, as Schopenhauer
put it, they must photograph the idea that is flying past, veiled in
its very swiftness.
George Santayana, Scepticislll and Ani111al Faith
If you visit the sites (a doubtful probability) you find nothing but m.emorytraces, for the mirror displacements were dismantled right after they were

ROBERT SMITHSON, Second Upside-down Tree, 1969. Capciva Island,

Florida.

132

ROBERT St'iiTHSON, The Map a( Glass, built at Loveladies, N.J. 1969

(detail).

photographed. The mirrors are somewhere in New York. The reflected light
has been erased. Ren1en1brances are but nurnbers on a map, vacant nl.etnories
constellating the intangible terrains in deleted vicinities. It is the dimension of
absence that remains to be found. The expunged color that remains to be seen.
The fictive voices of the totems have exhausted their arguments. Yucatan is
elsewhere.
NOTES

r.

This is JUSt one of thousands of hypothetical arguments in favor of Atlantis. Conjectural maps that point to this non-existent site fill many unread atlases. It very well
could be that the Maya writings that alluded to "the Old Serpent covered with green
feathers, who lies in the Ocean" was Quetzalcoatl or the Sargasso Sea. Every wayward geographer of Atlantis has his own curious theory, they never seem to be alike.
From Plato's Timaeus to Codex I atiwnus A the documents of the lost island proliferate. On a site in Loveladics, Long Beach Island, New Jersey a map of tons of clear
broken glass will follow Mr. Scott-Elliot's map of Atlantis. Other "Haps o( Brolee/1
Glass (Atlantis) will follow, each with its own odd limits.
Outside in the open air the glass map under the cycles of the sun radiates brightness without electric technology. Light is separable from color and form. It is a shin>mering collapse of decreated sharpness, poised on broken points showing the degrees of reflected incandescence. Color is the diminution of light. The cracked
transparency of the glass heaps diIuses the daylight of the actual solar source-nothing is fused or connected. The light of exploding magma on the sun is cast on to Atlantis, and ends in a cold luminosity. The heat of the solar rays collides with the
spheres of gases that enclose the Earth. Like the glass, the rays arc shattered, broken
bits of energy, no stronger than moonbeams. A luciferous incest of light particles
flashes into a brittle mass.A stagnant blaze sinks into the glassy map of a non-existent
island. The sheets of glass leaning against each other allow the sunny flickers to slide
down into hidden fractures of splintered shadow. The map is a series of "upheavals"
and" collapses"-a strata of unstable fi:agments is arrested by the friction of stability.

133

TIHI

ARTIST AND POliTICS:

SYMPOSIUM

(I

The symposium question was, "A growing number- of ar-tists have begun
to feel the need to r-espond to the deepening political ct-isis in America.
Among these artists, however, ther-e ar-e ser-ious differ-ences concer-ning
their relations to direct political actions. Many feel that the political implications of their wor-k constitute the most profound political action they
can take. Others, not denying this, continue to feel the need for an immediate, dir-ect political commitment Still other-s feel that their- wor-k is
devoid of political meaning and that their- political lives ar-e unrelated to
their art What is your position regarding the kinds of political action that
sould be taken by ar-tists?"
The artist does not have to will a response to the "deepening political crisis in
America." Sooner or later the artist is implicated or devoured by politics without even trying. My "position" is one of sinking into an awareness of global
squalor and futility. The rat of politics always gnaws at the cheese of art. The
trap is set. If there's an original curse, then politics has smnething to do with it.
Direct political action becomes a matter of trying to pick poison out of boiling stew. The pain of this experience accelerates a need for more and more actions. "Actions speak louder than words." Such loud actions pour in on one
like quicksand-one doesn't have to start one's own action. Actions swirl
around one so 1st they appear inactive. From a deeper level of "the deepening
political crisis," the best and the worst actions run together and surround one
in the inertia of a whirlpool. The bottom is never reached, but one keeps dropping into a kind of political centrifugal force that throws the blood of atrocities onto those working for peace. The horror becomes so intense, so imprisoning that one is overwhelmed by a sense of dis;_r;ust.
Conscience-stricken, the artist wants to stop the massive hurricane of carnage, to separate the liberating revolution from the repressive war machine. Of
course, he sides with the revolution, then he discovers that real revolution
means violence too. Gandhi is invoked, but Gandhi was assassinated. Artists always feel sympathy for victims. Yet, politics thrives on cruel sacrifices. Artists
tend to be tender; they have an acute fear of blood baths and revolutionary terror. The political system that now controls the world on every level should be
denied by art. Yet, why are so many artists now attracted to the dangerous
world of politics? Perhaps, at the bottom, artists like anybody else yearn for
that unbearable situation that politics leads to: the threat of pain, the horror of
annihilation, that would end in calm and peace. Disgust generated by fear erea tes a personal panic, that seeks relief in sacrifice. Primitive sacrifices controlled
ArtfonJIII, September I970; Smithson's title was "Art and the Political Whirlpool or the

Politics ofDisgust"

134

by religious rites were supposed to extract life from death. The blind surge of
life, I'm afraid, threatens itself. Modern sacrifices become a matter of chance
and randomness. Nobody can face the absolute limit of death.
Student and police riots on a deeper level are ceremonial sacrifices based on
a primal contingency-not a rite but an accident. Nevertheless, because of
n1edia co-option, the riots are being structured into rites. The students are a
"life force" as opposed to the police "death force." Abbie Hoffman makes reference to William Golding's Lord of tlze Flies on page 184 of RetJolutiou j(Jr the

Hell of It; Golding's pig devil surrounded by flies is compared by Hoffman to

an "unbelievable smell of decay and shit." Golding's novel abounds in images
of piggishness; there is the fat boy called Piggy, and the rotten head of a pig.
The overall mood of the novel is one of original disgust. One must remember
that this novel was very popular with students sorne years ago. Life is swollen
like Piggy and this is disappointing, the clean world of capitalism begins to
stink, "the sexual channels are also the body's sewers" (George Bataille), nausea
and repugnance bring one to the brink of violence. Only the fires of hell can
burn away the slimy, maggot-ridden decornposition that exists in life, hence

RetJolutiou for tlze Hell of It.

"Then the rest joined in, making pig-dying noises and shouting." (Lord of
tlze Flies.) As time goes by, pollution and other excreta are liable to turn the
planet Earth into a more horrible pigpen. Perhaps, the moon landing was one
of the most demoralizing events in history, in that the media revealed the
planet Earth to be a limited closed system, not unlike the island in Lord

of t!IC

Flies. As the E1rth thickens with blood and waste, as the population increases,
the stress factor could bring "the system" to total frenzy. Imagine a future
where eroticism and love are under so much pressure and savagery that they
veer towards cannibalism. When politics is controlled by the military, with its
billions of dollars, the result is a debased demonology, a social aberration that
operates vvith the help of Beelzebub (the pig devil) between the regions of
Marmnon and Moloch.

135

(I
The title GYROSTASIS refers to a branch of physics that deals with rotating
bodies, and their tendency to n1aintain their equilibrium. The work is a standing triangulated spiral. When I made the sculpture I was thinking of mapping
procedures that refer to the planet Earth. One could consider it as a crystallized fragment of a gyroscopic rotation, or as an abstract three dimensional map
that points to the SPIRAL JETTY, r970 in the Great Salt Lake, Utah. GYROSTASIS is relational, and should not be considered as an isolated object.

ROBERT SMITHSON, Gyrostasis, 1960. Painted steel, 73 x 57 x 40".

Written in I970; published in Hirshi101'!11Vflisel/lll and Swlpt11re Garden Catalog, 1974

136

ROBERT SMITHSON, 400 Seattle Horizons, 1969. (Destroyed, lnstamatic snapshots.)

"We are lost between the abyss within us and the boundless horizons outside us."

!NEMATIC ATO lA

( 91 I)

Going to the cinema results in <ln immobilization of the body. Not much gets
in the way of one's perception. All one can do is look and listen. One forgets
where one is sitting. The luminous screen spreads a murky light throughout
the darkness. Making a film is one thing, viewing a film another. Impassive,
rnute, still the viewer sits. The outside world fades as the eyes probe the screen.
Does it matter what film one is watching? Perhaps. One thing all films have in
common is the power to take perception elsewhere. As I write this, I'm trying
to remember a film I liked, or even one I didn't like. My memory becomes a
wilderness of elsewheres. How, in such a condition, can I write about film? I
don't know. I could know. But I would rather not know. Instead, I will allow
the elsewheres to reconstruct themselves as a tangled mass. Somewhere at
the bottom of my memory are the sunken ren1ains of all the films I have ever
seen, good and bad they swarm together forming cinematic mirages, stagnant
pools of images that cancel each other out. A notion of the abstractness of films
crosses my mind, only to be swallowed up in a morass of Hollywood garbage.
A pure film of lights and darks slips into a dim landscape of countless westerns.
Some sagebrush here, a little cactus there, trails and hoofbeats going nowhere.
The thought of a film with a "story" makes me listless. How many stories have
I seen on the screen? All those "characters" carrying out dumb tasks. Actors
doing exciting things. It's enough to put one into a permanent coma.
Let us assume I have a few favorites. Ilcint? also called LiJJing, To LilJe, Dool/led.

Art/ow111, September 1971

130

No, that won't do. Japanese films are too exhausting. Taken as a lump, they renund me of a recording by Captain Beef Heart called japan in a Dishpan.
There's always Satyajit Ray for a heavy dose of tedium, if you're into tediurn.
Actually, I tend to prefer lurid sensationalism. For that I must turn to SO!Tte
English director, Alfred Hitchcock will do. You know, the shot in Psycho where
Janet Leigh's eye emerges from the bathtub drain after she's been stabbed.
Then there's always the Expanded Cine111a, as developed by Gene Youngblood,
complete with an introduction by "Bucky" Fuller. Rats for Breakfast could be a
hypothetical film directed by the great utopian himself. It's not hard to consider cinema expanding into a deafening pale abstraction controlled by computers. At the fringes of this expanse one nught discover the deteriorated images of Hollis Frampton's Maxwell's Del/ion? After the "structural film" there is
the sprawl of entropy. The n1.onad of cinematic limits spills out into a state of
stupefaction. We are faced with inventories oflimbo.
If I could only map this limbo with dissolves, you might have some notion
as to where it is. But that is impossible. It could be described as a cinematic
borderland, a landscape of rejected film clips. To be sure it is a neglected place,
if we can even call it a "place." If there was ever a ftlm festival 'in limbo it would
be called "Oblivion." The awkwardness of amateur snapshots brings this place
somewhat into focus. The depraved animation that George Landow employed
in one of his ftlms somewhat locates the region. A kind of aphasia orders this

ROBERT SMITHSON,Stills from Spiro/jetty, 1970.

139

teetering realm. Not one order but many orders clash with one another, as do
"facts" in an obsolete encyclopedia.
If we put together a film encyclopedia in limbo, it would be quite groundless. Categories would destroy themselves, no law or plan would hold itself together for very long. There would be no table or contents for the Table of
Contents. The index would slither away into so much cinematic slime. For example, I could make a film based (or debased) on the A section of the index in
Film Culture Reader. Each reference would consist of a 30-second take. Here is
a list of the takes in alphabetical order: Abstract Expressionism, Agee James,
Alexandrov Grigory, Allen Lewis, Anger Kenneth, Antonioni Michelangelo,
Aristarco Guido, Arnheim Rudolf, Artaud Antonin, Astruc Alexandre. Only
the letter A gives this index its order. Where is the coherence? The logic
threatens to wander out of control.
In this cinematic atopia orders and groupings have a way of proliferating
outside their original structure or n1eaning. There is nothing more tentative
than an established order. What we take to be the most concrete or solid often
turns into a concatenation of the unexpected. Any order can be reordered.
What seems to be without order, often turns out to be highly ordered. By iso-

ROBERT SMITHSON, Stills from Spira/fetty, 1970.

140

lating the most unstable thing, we can arrive at some kind of coherence, at
least for awhile. The simple rectangle of the movie screen contains the flux, no
matter how many different orders one presents. But no sooner have we fixed
the order in our mind than it dissolves into limbo. Tangled jungles, blind paths,
secret passages, lost cities invade our perception. The sites in f1lms are not to be
located or trusted. All is out of proportion. Scale inflates or deflates into uneasy
dimensions. We wander between the towering and the bottomless. We are lost
between the abyss within us and the boundless horizons outside us. Any film
wraps us in uncertainty. The longer we look through a camera or watch a projected image the remoter the world becomes, yet we begin to understand that
remoteness more. Limits trap the illimitable, until the spring we discovered
turns into a flood. "A camera filming itself in a mirror would be the ultimate
movie," says Jean-Luc Godard.
The ultimate film goer would be a captive of sloth. Sitting constantly in a
movie house, among the flickering shadows, his perception would take on a
kind of sluggishness. He would be the hermit dwelling among the elsewheres,
forgoing the salvation of reality. Films would follow films, until the action of
each one would drown in a vast reservoir of pure perception. He would not be

141

able to distinguish between good or bad films, all would be swallowed up into
an endless blur. He would not be watching films, but rather experiencing blurs
of many shades. Between blurs he rnight even fall asleep, but that wouldn't
matter. Sound tracks would hum through the torpor. Words would drop
through this languor like so many lead weights. This dozing consciousness
would bring about a tepid abstraction. It would increase the gravity of perception. Like a tortoise crawling over a desert, his eyes would crawl across the
screen. All films would be brought into equilibrium-a vast mud field of images forever motionless. But ultimate movie-viewing should not be encouraged, any more than ultimate movie-making.
What I would like to do is build a cinema in a cave or an abandoned nline,
and film the process of its construction. That film would be the only film
shown in the cave. The projection booth would be made out of crude timbers, the screen carved out of a rock wall and painted white, the seats could be
boulders. It would be a truly "underground" cinema. This would mean visiting
many caves and mines. Once when I was in Vancouver, I visited Britannia
Copper Mines with a cameraman intending to make a film, but the project
dissolved. The tunnels in the mine were grim and wet. I remember a horizontal tunnel that bored into the side of a mountain. When one was at the end of
the tunnel inside the mine, and looked back at the entrance, only a pinpoint of
light was visible. One shot I had in mind was to move slowly from the interior
of the tunnel towards the entrance and end outside. In the Cayuga Rock Salt
Mine under Lake Cayuga in New York State I did manage to get some still
shots of mirrors stuck in salt piles, but no film. Yet another ill-fated project involved the American Cement Mines in California-! wanted to film the demolition of a disused cavern. Nothing was done.

142

THE S IRAL

(19

Red is the most joyful and dr-eadful thing in the physical univer-se; it is the
fier-cest note, it is the highest light it is the place wher-e the walls of this
world of ours wear- the thinnest and something beyond burns thr-ough.
G. K. Chester-ton

My concern with salt lakes began with my work in 1968 on the Mono Lake
Site-N onsite in California. Later I read a book c1lled T/nnishing Tiails t!/Atacantn by William Rudolph which described salt lakes (salars) in Bolivia in all
1

stages of desiccation, and filled with micro bacteria

give the water surface
a red color. The pink flamingos that live around the salars match the color of
the water. In The Useless Land, John Aarons and Claudio Vita-Finzi describe
Laguna Colorada: "The basalt (at the shores) is black, the volcanos purple, and
their exposed interiors yellow and red. The beach is grey and the lake pink,
topped with the icing of iceberg-like masses of salts." c Because of the remoteness of Bolivia and because Mono Lake lacked a reddish color, I decided to investigate the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
Arts of the Ent'ironl/lelll, edited by Gyorgy Kepes, 1972

This and the following illustrations show the Spiral jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah, April 1970. Coil 1500' long and
approximately 15' wide. Black r-ock, salt crystals, earth, red warer (algae). All photos are by Gianfranco Gorgoni.

144

From New York City I called the Utah Park Development and spoke to Ted
Tuttle, who told m.e that water in the Great Salt Lake north of the Lucin Cutof( which cuts the lake in two, was the color of tom.ato soup. That was enough
of a reason to go out there and have a look. Tuttle told my wife, Nancy Holt,
and myself of some people who knew the lake. First we visited Bill Holt who
lived in Syracuse. He was instrumental in building a causeway that connected
Syracuse with Antelope Island in the southern part of the Great Salt Lake. Although that site was interesting, the water lacked the red coloration I was
looking for, so we continued our search. Next we went to see John Silver on
Silver Sands Beach near Magna. His sons showed us the only boat that sailed
the lake. Due to the high salt content of the water it was impractical for ordinary boats to use the lake, and no large boats at all could go beyond the Lucin
Cutoff on which the transcontinental railroad crossed the lake. At that point I
was still not sure what shape my work of art would take. I thought of tnaking
an island with the help of boats and barges, but in the end I would let the site
determine what I would build. We visited Charles Stoddard, who supposedly
had the only barge on the north side of the cutoff. Stoddard, a well-driller, was
one of the last homesteaders in Utah. His attempt to develop Carrington Island in I932 ended in 1ilure because he couldn't find fresh water. 'Tve had the
lake," he said. Yet, while he was living on the island with his family he made
many valuable observations of the lake. He was kind enough to take us to Little
Valley on the east side of the Lucin Cutoff to look for his barge-it had sunk.
The abandoned man-made harbors of Little Valley gave me my first view of
the wine-red water, but there were too many "Keep Out" signs around to
make that a practical site for anything, and we were told to "stay away" by two
angry ranchers. After fixing a gashed gas tank, we returned to Charles Stoddard's house north of Syracuse on the edge of some salt rnarshes. He showed
us photographs he had taken of "icebergs," 3 and Kit Carson's cross carved on a
rock on Fremont Island. We then decided to leave and go to Rozel Point.
Driving west on Highway 83 late in the afternoon, we passed through
Corinne, then went on to Promontory. Just beyond the Golden Spike Monument, which commemorates the tneeting of the rails of the first transcontinental railroad, we went down a dirt road in a wide valley. As we traveled, the valley spread into an uncanny immensity unlike the other landscapes we had
seen. The roads on the map became a net of dashes, while in the far distance
the Salt Lake existed as an interrupted silver band. Hills took on the appearance of melting solids, and glowed under amber light. We followed roads that
glided away into dead ends. Sandy slopes turned into viscous masses of perception. Slowly, we drew near to the lake, which resembled an impassive faint violet sheet held captive in a stoney rnatrix, upon which the sun poured down its
crushing light. An expanse of salt flats bordered the lake, and caught in its sediments were countless bits of wreckage. Old piers were left high and dry. The
mere sight of the trapped fragments of junk and waste transported one into a
145

world of modern prehistory. The products of a Devonian industry, the remains

of a Silurian technology, all the machines of the Upper Carboniferous Period
were lost in those expansive deposits of sand and mud.
Two dilapidated shacks looked over a tired group of oil rigs. A series of
seeps of heavy black oil more like asphalt occur just south of Rozel Point. For
forty or more years people have tried to get oil out of this natural tar pool.
Pumps coated with black stickiness rusted in the corrosive salt air. A hut
mounted on pilings could have been the habitation of "the missing link." A
great pleasure arose from seeing all those incoherent structures. This site gave
evidence of a succession of man-made systems mired in abandoned hopes.
About one mile north of the oil seeps I selected my site. Irregular beds of
limestone dip gently eastward, massive deposits of black basalt are broken over
the peninsula, giving the region a shattered appearance. It is one of few places
on the lake where the water comes right up to the mainland. Under shallow
pinkish water is a network of mud cracks supporting the jig-saw puzzle that
composes the salt flats. As I looked at the site, it reverberated out to the horizons only to suggest an inm1obile cyclone while flickering light made the entire landscape appear to quake. A dormant earthquake spread into the fluttering stillness, into a spinning sensation without movement. This site was a
rotary that enclosed itself in an immense roundness. From that gyrating space
emerged the possibility of the Spiral Jetty. No ideas, no concepts, no systems,
no structures, no abstractions could hold themselves together in the actuality
of that evidence. My dialectics of site and nonsite whirled into an indeterminate state, where solid and liquid lost themselves in each other. It was as if the
mainland oscillated with waves and pulsations, and the lake remained rock still.
The shore of the lake became the edge of the sun, a boiling curve, an explosion rising into a ftery prominence. Matter collapsing into the lake mirrored in
the shape of a spiral. No sense wondering about classifications and categories,
there were none.
After securing a twenty year lease on the meandering
and finding a
contractor in Ogden, I began building the jetty in April, 1970. Bob Phillips, the
foreman, sent two dump trucks, a tractor, and a large front loader out to the
site. The tail of the spiral began as a diagonal line of stakes that extended into
the meandering zone. A string was then extended from a central stake in order
to get the coils of the spiral. From the end of the diagonal to the center of the
spiral, three curves coiled to the left. Basalt and earth were scooped up from
the beach at the beginning of the jetty by the front loader, then deposited in the
trucks, whereupon the trucks backed up to the outline of stakes and dumped
the material. On the edge of the water, at the beginning of the tail, the wheels
of the trucks sank into a quagmire of sticky gumbo mud. A whole afternoon
was spent filling in this spot. Once the trucks passed that problem, there was
always the chance that the salt crust resting on the mud flats would break
through. The Spiral Jetty was staked out in such a way as to avoid the soft
146

muds that broke up through the salt crust; nevertheless there were som.e mud
fissures that could not be avoided. One could only hope that tension would
hold the entire jetty together, and it did. A cameraman was sent by the Ace
Gallery in Los Angeles to film the process.
The scale of the Spiral Jetty tends to fluctuate depending on where the
viewer happens to be. Size determines an object, but scale determines art. A
crack in the wall if viewed in terms of scale, not size, could be called the Grand
Canyon. A room could be made to take on the immensity of the solar system.
Scale depends on one's capacity to be conscious of the actualities of perception. When one refuses to release scale from size, one is left with an object or
language that appears to be certain. For me scale operates by uncertainty. To be
in the scale of the Spiral Jetty is to be out of it. On eye level, the tail leads one
into an undifferentiated state of matter. One's downward gaze pitches from
side to side, picking out random depositions of salt crystals on the inner and
outer edges, while the entire mass echoes the irregular horizons. And each
cubic salt crystal echoes the Spiral Jetty in terms of the crystal's molecular lattice. Growth in a crystal advances around a dislocation point, in the manner of
a screw. The Spiral Jetty could be considered one layer within the spiraling
crystal lattice, magnified trillions of times.
This description echoes and reflects Brancusi's sketch of James Joyce as a
"spiral ear" because it suggests both a visual and an aural scale, in other words
it indicates a sense of scale that resonates in the eye and the ear at the same
time. Here is a reinforcement and prolongation of spirals that reverberates up
and down space and time. So it is that one ceases to consider art in terms of an
"object." The fluctuating resonances reject "objective criticism," because that
would stifle the generative power of both visual and auditory scale. Not to say
that one resorts to "subjective concepts," but rather that one apprehends what
is around one's eyes and ears, no nutter how unstable or fugitive. One seizes
the spiral, and the spiral becomes a seizure.
After a point, measurable steps ("Scale skal n. it. or L; it. Scala; L scala usually

scnlae pl.,

I.

a. originally a ladder; a flight of stairs; hence, b. a means of ascent" )5

descend from logic to the "surd state." The rationality of a grid on a map sinks
into what it is supposed to defme. Logical purity suddenly finds itself in a bog,
and welcomes the unexpected event. The "curved" reality of sense perception
operates in and out of the "straight" abstractions of the mind. The flowing mass
of rock and earth of the Spiral Jetty could be trapped by a grid of segments,
but the segments would exist only in the mind or on paper. Of course, it is also
possible to translate the mental spiral into a three-dimensional succession of
measured lengths that would involve areas, volmnes, masses, tnoments, pressures, forces, stresses, and strains; but in the Spiral Jetty the surd takes over and
leads one into a world that cannot be expressed by number or rationality. Ambiguities are admitted rather than rejected, contradictions are increased rather
than decreased-the alogos undermines the logos. Purity is put in jeopardy. I

147

Detail of tumbleweed coated with salt crystals.

The Spiral jetty, detail.

took my chances on a perilous path, along which my steps zigzagged, resembling a spiral lightning bolt. "We have found a strange footprint on the shores
of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in constructing the creature
that made the footprint. And lo' it is our own." 6 For my film (a film is a spiral
made up of fiames) I would have myself filmed from a helicopter (from the
Greek helix, helikos meaning spiral) directly overhead in order to get the scale
in terms of erratic steps.
Chemically speaking, our blood is analogous in composition to the primordial seas. Following the spiral steps we return to our origins, back to som.e
pulpy protoplasm, a floating eye adrift in an antediluvian ocean. On the slopes
of Rozel Point I closed my eyes, and the sun burned crimson through the lids.
I opened them. and the Great Salt Lake was bleeding scarlet streaks. My sight
was saturated by the color of red algae circulating in the heart of the lake,
pumping into ruby currents, no they were veins and arteries sucking up the obscure sediments. My eyes became combustion chambers churning orbs of blood
blazing by the light of the sun. All was enveloped in a flaming chromosphere; I
thought of Jackson Pollock's Eyes in the Heat (1946; Peggy Guggenheim Collection). Swirling within the incandescence of solar energy were sprays of
blood. My movie would end in sunstroke. Perception was heaving, the stomach turning, I was on a geologic fault that groaned within me. Between heat
lightning and heat exhaustion the spiral curled into vaporization. I had the red
heaves, while the sun vomited its corpuscular radiations. Rays of glare hit my
eyes with the frequency of a Geiger counter. Surely, the storm clouds massing
would turn into a rain of blood. Once, when I was flying over the lake, its
surface seemed to hold all the properties of an unbroken field of raw meat
with gristle (foam); no doubt it was due to some freak wind action. Eyesight is
often slaughtered by the other senses, and when that happens it becomes necessary to seek out dispassionate abstractions. The dizzying spiral yearns for
the assurance of geornetry. One wants to retreat into the cool rooms of reason.
148

But no, there was Van Gogh with his easel on some sun-baked lagoon painting
ferns of the Carboniferous Period. Then the mirage faded into the burning
atmosphere.

Fro111 the center of the Spiml Jetty

North- Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
North by East
Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
Northeast by North- Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
Northeast by East
Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
East by North- Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
East- Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
East by South -Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
Southeast by East -Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
Southeast by South
Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
South by East -Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
South
Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
South by West -Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
Southwest by South -Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
Southwest by West -Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
West by South- Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
West -Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
West by North -Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
Northwest by West- Mud, salt
rocks, water
Northwest by North- Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water
North by West

Mud, salt crystals, rocks, water

The helicopter maneuvered the sun's reflection through the Spiral Jetty
until it reached the center. The water functioned as a vast thermal mirror.
From that position the flaming reflection suggested the ion source of a cyclotron that extended into a spiral of collapsed matter. All sense of energy acceleration expired into a rippling stillness of reflected heat. A withering light
swallowed the rocky particles of the spiral, as the helicopter gained altitude. All
existence seemed tentative and stagnant. The sound of the helicopter motor
became a primal groan echoing into tenuous aerial views. Was I but a shadow
in a plastic bubble hovering in a place outside mind and body? Et in Utah ego. I
was slipping out of myself again, dissolving into a unicellular beginning, trying
to locate the nucleus at the end of the spiral. All that blood stirring makes one
aware of protoplasmic solutions, the essential matter between the formed and
the unformed, masses of cells consisting largely of water, proteins, lipoids, carbohydrates, and inorganic salts. Each drop that splashed onto the Spiral Jetty
coagulated into a crystal. Undulating waters spread millions upon millions of
crystals over the basalt.
149

The preceding paragraphs refer to a "scale of centers" that could be disentangled as follows:
(a) ion source in cyclotron
(b) a nucleus
(c) dislocation point
(d) a wooden stake in the mud
(e) axis ofhelicopter propeller
(f) James Joyce's ear channel
(g) the Sun
(h) a hole in the fihn reel.
Spinning off of this uncertain scale of centers would be an equally uncertain
"scale of edges":
(a) particles
(b) protoplasmic solutions
(c) dizziness
(d) ripples
(e) flashes oflight
(f) sections
(g) foot steps
(h) pink water.
The equation of my language remains unstable, a shifting set of coordinates,
an arrangement of variables spilling into surds. My equation is as clear as mud
-a nmddy spiral.
Back in New York, the urban desert, I contacted Bob Fiore and Barbara
Jarvis and asked them to help me put my movie together. The movie began as
a set of disconnections, a bramble of stabilized fragments taken from things
obscure and fluid, ingredients trapped in a succession of frames, a stream of viscosities both still and moving. And the movie editor, bending over such a
chaos of "takes" resembles a paleontologist sorting out glimpses of a world not
yet together, a land that has yet to come to completion, a span of time unfinished, a spaceless limbo on some spiral reels. Film strips hung fiom the cutter's
rack, bits and pieces of Utah, out-takes overexposed and underexposed, masses
of impenetrable material. The sun, the spiral, the salt buried in lengths of
footage. Everything about movies and moviemaking is archaic and crude. One
is transported by this Archeozoic medium into the earliest known geological
eras. The movieola becomes a "time machine" that transforms trucks into dinosaurs. Fiore pulled lengths of film out of the movieola with the grace of a
Neanderthal pulling intestines fiom a slaughtered mammoth. Outside his 13th
Street loft window one expected to see Pleistocene faunas, glacial uplifts, living fossils, and other prehistoric wonders. Like two cavemen we plotted how
to get to the Spiral Jetty from New York City. A geopolitics of primordial re-

ISO

turn ensued. How to get across the geography of Gondwanaland, the Austral
Sea, and Atlantis became a problem. Consciousness of the distant past absorbed
the time that went into the making of the movie. I needed a map that would
show the prehistoric world as coextensive with the world I existed in.
I found an oval map of such a double world. The continents of the Jurassic
Period merged with continents of today. A microlensc fitted to the end of a
camera mounted on a heavy tripod would trace the course of "absent images"
in the blank spaces of the map. The camera panned from right to left. One is
liable to see things in maps that are not there. One must be careful of the hypothetical monsters that lurk between the map's latitudes; they are designated
on the map as black circles (marine reptiles) and squares (land reptiles). In the
pan shot one doesn't see the flesh-eaters walking through what today is called
Indochina. There is no indication of Pterodactyls flying over Bom.bay. And
where are the corals and sponges covering southern Germany? In the emptiness one sees no Stegosaurus. In the middle of the pan we see Europe completely under water, but not a trace of the Brontosaurus. What line or color
hides the Globigerina Ooze? I don't know. As the pan ends near Utah, on the
edge of Atlantis, a cut takes place, and we find ourselves looking at a rectangular grid known as Location NK r2-7 on the border of a map drawn by the
U.S. Geological Survey showing the northern part of the Great Salt Lake
without any reference to the Jurassic Period .
. . . the earth's history seems at times like a story recorded in a
book each page of which is torn into small pieces. Many of the
pages and some of the pieces of each page are missing ... _7
I wanted Nancy to shoot "the earth's history" in one minute for the third
section of the movie. I wanted to treat the above quote as a "fact." We drove
out to the Great Notch Quarry in New Jersey, where I found a quarry facing
about twenty feet high. I climbed to the top and threw handfuls of ripped-up
pages fiom books and magazines over the edge, while Nancy filmed it. Some
ripped pages from an Old Atlas blew across a dried out, cracked mud puddle.
According to all we know from fossil anatomy that beast was
comparatively harmless. Its only weapons were its teeth and claws.
I don't know what those obscene looking paunches rneanthey don't show in any fossil remains yet found. Nor do I know
whether red is their natural color, or whether it is due to faster
decay owing to all the oil having dripped down off them. So
much for its supposed identity. 8
The movie recapitulates the scale of the Spiral Jetty. Disparate elements assume a coherence. Unlikely places and things were stuck between sections of
film that show a stretch of dirt road rushing to and from the actual site in
Utah. A road that goes forward and backward between things and places that

151

are elsewhere. You nlight even say that the road is nowhere in particular. The
disjunction operating between reality and film drives one into a sense of cosmic rupture. Nevertheless, all the improbabilities would acconunodate themselves to my cinematic universe. Adrift anlid scraps of film, one is unable to infuse into them any meaning, they seem worn-out, ossifred views, degraded and
pointless, yet they are powerful enough to hurl one into a lucid vertigo. The
road takes one from a telescopic shot of the sun to a quarry in Great Notch
New Jersey, to a map showing the "deformed shorelines of ancient Lake Bonneville," to The Lost World, and to the Hall of Late Dinosaurs in the American
Museum ofNatural History.
The hall was filmed through a red filter. The camera focuses on a Ornithominus Altus embedded in plaster behind a glass case. A pan across the
room picked up a crimsom chiaroscuro tone. There are times when the great
outdoors shrinks phenomenologically to the scale of a prison, and times when
the indoors expands to the scale of the universe. So it is with the sequence
from the Hall of Late Dinosaurs. An interior immensity spreads throughout
the hall, transforming the lightbulbs into dying suns. The red filter dissolves the
floor, ceiling, and walls into halations of infinite redness. Boundless desolation
emerged from the cinematic emulsions, red clouds, burned from the intangible light beyond the windows, visibility deepened into ruby dispersions. The
bones, the glass cases, the armatures brought forth a blood-drenched atmosphere. Blindly the camera stalked through the sullen light. Glassy reflections
flashed into dissolutions like powdered blood. Under <l burning window the
skull of a Tyrannosaurus was mounted in a glass case with a mirror under the
skull. In this limitless scale one's mind imagines things that are not there. The
blood-soaked dropping of a sick Duck-Billed Dinosaur, for instance. Rotting
monster flesh covered with millions of red spiders. Delusion follows delusion.
The ghostly cameraman slides over the glassed-in compounds. These fragments
of a timeless geology laugh without mirth at the time-filled hopes of ecology.
From the soundtrack the echoing metronome vanishes into the wilderness of
bones and glass. Tracking around a glass containing a "dinosaur mummy," the
words of The Unnallleable are heard. The camera shifts to a specimen squeezed
flat by the weight of sediments, then the film cuts to the road in Utah.
NOTES

Dialectic of Site and N onsite

1.

Site
I.
2.

3.
4
5
6.

152

Open Limits
A Series of Points
Outer Coordinates
Subtraction
Indeterminate
Certainty
Scattered
Infonnation

i\To!lSite
Closed Limits
An Array of Matter
Inner Coordinates
Addition
Determinate
Uncertainty
Contained
Information

7. Reflection
Edge
9. Some Place
(physical)
ro. Many

Mirror
Center
No Place
(abstract)
One

Range ol Convergence

2.
3.

4.

5.
6.
7
8.

The range of convergence between Site and Nonsite consists of a course of hazards, a
double path made up of signs, photographs, and maps that belong to both sides of
the dialectic at once. Both sides are present and absent at the same time. The land or
ground from the Site is placed in the art (Nonsite) rather than the art placed 011 the
ground. The Nonsite is a container within another container-the room. The plot
or yard outside is yet another container. Two-dimensional and three-dimensional
things trade places with each other in the range of convergence. Large scale becomes
small. Small scale becomes large. A point on a map expands to the size of the land
mass. A land mass contracts into a point. Is the Site a reflection of the Nonsite (mirror), or is it the other way around? The rules of this network of signs are discovered
as you go along uncertain trails both mental and physical.
"No fish or reptile lives in it (Mono Lake), yet it swarms with millions of worms
which develop into flies. These rest on the surface and cover everything on the immediate shore. The number and quantity of those worms and flies is absolutely incredible.
They drift up in heaps along the shore." W H. Brewer, The Hlhitney Survey, I 863.
London, 1960, p. 129.
"In spite of the concentrated saline quality of the water, ice is often formed on parts
of the Lake. Of course, the lake brine does not freeze; it is far too salty for that. What
actually happens is that during relatively calm weather, fresh water from the various
streams flowing into the lake 'floats' on top of the salt water, the two failing to mix.
Near mouths of rivers and creeks this 'floating' condition exists at all times during
calm weather. During the winter this fiesh water often freezes before it mixes with
the brine. Hence, an ice sheet several inches thick has been known to extend from
Weber River to Fremont Island, making it possible for coyotes to cross to the island
and molest sheep pastured there. At times this ice breaks loose and floats about the
lake in the form of 'icebergs.'" (David E. Miller, Great Salt Lake Past and Present,
Pamphlet of the Utah History Atlas, Salt Lake City, 1949.)
Totu!IShip 8 Nortlc of" Range 7 TT/est ol the Salt Lake Base a11d lVIeridian: Unsurveyed land
on the bed of the Great Salt Lake, if surveyed, would be described as follows:
Beginning at a point South 3000 feet and West Soo feet from the Northeast Corner of Section 8, Township 8 North, Range 7 West; thence South 45 West 65 I feet;
thence North 6o 0 West 651 feet; thence North 45 East 651 feet; thence Southeasterly along the meander line 675 feet to the point of beginning. Containing ro.oo
acres, more or less. (Special Use Lease Agreement No. 222; witness: Mr. Mark Crystal.)
H/ebster's New !Vorld Dictionary of" the A111eriwn Language (College Edition), World Publishing Co., 1959, U.S.A.
A. S. Eddington, quoted on p. 232 in Nuncber; the Language o{Scieme, Tobias Dantzig.
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1954.
Thomas H. Clark, Colin W Stern, Geological Evolution ol North Ameriw, New York,
Ronald Press Co., n.d., p. 5.
John Taine, Tire Greatest Adumture, Three Science Fictio11 Nouels, New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1963, p. 239.

153

!LTURAL

Cultural

INEMENT

(19

takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an

art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits. Artists are expected
to fit into fraudulent categories. Some artists imagine they've got a hold on
this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up
supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control. Artists themselves are
not confined, but their output is. Museums, like asylums and jails, have wards
and cells-in other vvords, neutral rooms called "galleries." A work of art when
placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becon1.es a portable object or surface
disengaged from the outside world. A vacant white room with lights is still a
submission to the neutral. Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going
through a kind of esthetic convalescence. They are looked upon as so many
inanimate invalids, waiting for critics to pronounce them curable or incurable.
The function of the warden-curator is to separate art from the rest of society.
Next comes integration. Once the work of art is totally neutralized, ineffec-

Artfontllt, October 1972

This statement was published originally in the Documenta
tribution to the exhibition.

s catalogue as Smithson's con-

ROBERT SMITHSON, Wandering Canal with Mounds, 1971 Pencil, 19 x 24".

tive, abstracted, safe, and politically lobotomized it is ready to be consumed by

society. All is reduced to visual fodder and transportable merchandise. Innovations are allowed only if they support this kind of confmement.
Occult notions of "concept" are in retreat from the physical world. Heaps
of private information reduce art to herm.eticism and fatuous metaphysics.
Language should fmd itself in the physical world, and not end up locked in an
idea in somebody's head. Language should be an ever developing procedure
and not an isolated occurrence. Art shows that have beginnings and ends are
confmed by unnecessary modes of represe/lf{/fion both "abstract" and "realistic."
A face or a grid on a canvas is still a representation. Reducing representation to
writing does not bring one closer to the physical world. Writing should generate ideas into rnatter, and not the other way around. Art's development should
be dialectical and not metaphysical.
I am speaking of a dialectics that seeks a world outside of cultural confmement. Also, I am not interested in art works that suggest "process" within the
metaphysical limits of the neutral room. There is no freedom in that kind of
behavioral game playing. The artist acting like a B. F. Skinner rat doing his
"tough" little tricks is something to be avoided. Confined process is no process
at all. It would be better to disclose the confinement rather than make illusions
of freedom..
I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as
they exist fiom day to clay apart fiom representation. The parks that surround
some museums isolate art into objects of formal delectation. Objects in a park
suggest static repose rather than any ongoing dialectic. Parks are finished landscapes for finished art. A park carries the values of the final, the absolute, and
the sacred. Dialectics have nothing to do with such things. I am talking about
a dialectic of nature that interacts with the physical contradictions inherent in
natural forces as they are-nature as both sunny and storn1y. Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal. Nature does
not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development. Nature is
never fmished. When a finished work of 2oth-century sculpture is placed in an
r8th-century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus
reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us. Many parks
and gardens are re-creations of the lost paradise or Eden, and not the dialectical sites of the present. Parks and gardens are pictorial in their origin-landscapes created with natural materials rather than paint. The scenic ideals that
surround even our national parks are carriers of a nostalgia for heavenly bliss
and eternal caln1ness.
Apart fiom the ideal gardens of the past, and their modern counterpartsnational and large urban parks-there are the more infernal regions-slag
heaps, strip mines, and polluted rivers. Because of the great tendency toward
idealism, both pure and abstract, society is confused as to what to do with such
places. Nobody wants to go on a vacation to a garbage dm11p. Our land ethic,

155

especially in that never-never land called the "art world" has become clouded
with abstractions and concepts.
Could it be that certain art exhibitions have become metaphysical junkyards? Categorical miasmas? Intellectual rubbish? Specific intervals of visual
desolation? The warden-curators still depend on the wreckage of metaphysical
principles and structures because they don't know any better. The wasted remains of ontology, cosmology, and epistenwlogy still offer a ground for art.
Although metaphysics is outmoded and blighted, it is presented as tough principles and solid reasons for installations of art. The museums and parks are
graveyards above the ground-congealed memories of the past that act as a
pretext for reality. This causes acute anxiety among artists, in so far as they
challenge, compete, and fight for the spoiled ideals oflost situations.

New jersey, New York with 2 Photos, 1967. Collage, maps, photographs, ink, pencil, 22 x 17'/e ".

The landscape-architect Andre formerly in charge of the suburban plantations of Pa1is, was walking with me through the Buttes-Chaumont Park,
of which he was the designer, when I said of a certain passage of it, "That,
to my mind, is the best piece of artificial planting of its age, I have ever
seen." He smiled and said, "Shall I confess that it is the result of neglect?"
Frederick Law Olmsted,

The Spoils of the Pork

Imagine yourself in Central Park one million years ago. You would be standing
on a vast ice sheet, a 4,000-mile glacial wall, as much as 2,000 feet thick. Alone
on the vast glacier, you would not sense its slow crushing, scraping, ripping
n10vement as it advanced south, leaving great masses of rock debris in its wake.
Under the fiozen depths, where the carousel now stands, you would not notice the effect on the bedrock as the glacier dragged itself along.

Art(oru111, February I97 3

Central Park, 1885, looking northwest from Pad< Avenue possibly around 94th or 95th Street.

157